Broken Cisterns and the Living Cross

14          “Is Israel a slave? Is he a homeborn servant?
Why then has he become a prey?
            15          The lions have roared against him;
they have roared loudly.
                        They have made his land a waste;
his cities are in ruins, without inhabitant.
            16          Moreover, the men of Memphis and Tahpanhes
have shaved the crown of your head.
            17          Have you not brought this upon yourself
by forsaking the Lord your God,
when he led you in the way?
            18          And now what do you gain by going to Egypt
to drink the waters of the Nile?
                        Or what do you gain by going to Assyria
to drink the waters of the Euphrates?
            19          Your evil will chastise you,
and your apostasy will reprove you.
                        Know and see that it is evil and bitter
for you to forsake the Lord your God;
the fear of me is not in you,
declares the Lord God of hosts.
            20          “For long ago I broke your yoke
and burst your bonds;
but you said, ‘I will not serve.’
                        Yes, on every high hill
and under every green tree
you bowed down like a whore.
            21          Yet I planted you a choice vine,
wholly of pure seed.
                        How then have you turned degenerate
and become a wild vine?
            22          Though you wash yourself with lye
and use much soap,
the stain of your guilt is still before me,
declares the Lord God.
            23          How can you say, ‘I am not unclean,
I have not gone after the Baals’?
                        Look at your way in the valley;
know what you have done—
                        a restless young camel running here and there,
            24          a wild donkey used to the wilderness,
                        in her heat sniffing the wind!
Who can restrain her lust?
                        None who seek her need weary themselves;
in her month they will find her.
            25          Keep your feet from going unshod
and your throat from thirst.
                        But you said, ‘It is hopeless,
for I have loved foreigners,
and after them I will go.’
Jeremiah 2:14-25
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Broken Cisterns and the Living Cross
Jeremiah speaks God’s hard but loving diagnosis: Israel is acting like a slave who has forgotten his home, chasing what cannot save. The Lord exposes the absurdity of idolatry, digging broken cisterns that cannot hold water while rejecting the living fountain. Sin always promises freedom but delivers thirst, shame, and weariness. We see ourselves here. We justify our wanderings, insisting we are not defiled, even as our paths betray us. Yet the Lord’s accusation is not the end of the story. The God who names the sin is the God who bears it. Israel’s unfaithfulness finds its answer not in better discipline but in the cross of Christ, where the true Servant is treated as a slave and struck down for wandering people. There, the thirst of our idolatry is met by His poured-out blood. Repentance, then, is not self-repair but return, to the crucified Lord who alone gives living water.