What Does Jeremiah 2:13 Mean in the King James?
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The two evils are one exchange: leaving the living source for containers made by human hands that cannot hold life.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present exchange: the living source is forsaken while effort is spent shaping containers that cannot hold water. Its two evils move together, departure from what gives life and reliance on a substitute that cannot keep it. The emptiness is built into the broken vessel itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that enough effort can make a substitute source sustain life.
THE ROOT
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live, be alive, or revive.
“Living” comes from the root for life and revival. Set against water trapped in a broken cistern, the phrase points to water connected to a living source, not merely a quantity stored in a container.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living, alive
חַי
This is the root’s direct form for what is alive, linking the waters to active life.
chayah: To live, revive
חָיָה
The verb carries the root from being alive to being restored to life, deepening the contrast with a vessel that cannot sustain what it holds.
נִשְׁבָּרִים
nishbarim
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter, or fracture.
The word describes a vessel whose structure is broken, not a sound vessel that happens to be empty. The fracture explains why the cistern cannot hold water: the substitute fails at the very thing it is built to do.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break, shatter
שָׁבַר
The verb names the breaking that leaves the cistern unable to retain water.
shever: Breaking, fracture, ruin
שֶׁבֶר
This noun carries the root’s result, the breach or ruin that makes the vessel incapable of holding what it needs.
THE PATTERN
Life is sustained by a living source that gives and flows, not by what a person can manufacture and hold.
For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.THE THREAD
O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.This verse repeats the same Hebrew phrase, “the fountain of living waters,” and the same root for forsaking. It makes the departure from the source explicit again, showing the first evil in Jeremiah 2:13 as the break beneath the empty substitute.
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