Jeremiah 2:13

This "tree" is a mystery. In ancient times, Moses sweetened the bitter water with it. The people who were perishing of thirst in the desert drank and were revived because of it. We do this, too. We were drawn out from the calamities of the world in which we were lingering, perishing with thirst (that is, deprived of the divine Word). We drank "by the faith which is on him," the baptismal water of the "tree" of the passion of Christ. We have revived the faith from which Israel has fallen away, as foretold through Jeremiah, who says, "Send, and continue to ask whether such things have been done, whether nations will change their gods (and these are not gods!). But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled at this, O heavens!"—and when were they appalled? Undoubtedly when Christ suffered—"and be shocked," he says, "utterly desolate."

Now, here he clearly reveals to us the mystery of the holy Trinity: he called the only-begotten Word of God a fountain of life. This is the name, too, remember, God personally gave himself through the prophet Jeremiah: "They have forsaken me, a fountain of …

(Verses 12, 13.) Be astonished, O heavens, at this, and shudder, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. LXX: The heavens were astonished at this, and were greatly alarmed, and the rest likewise. The heavens to whom it was said: Listen, O heavens, and I will speak. (Deut. 32:1): and, Hear, O earth, the words of the Lord (Isaiah 1:2), seeing that the commands of God are trampled upon, it shudders, and cannot hide its astonishment. For every creature groans and laments over the sins of men. But God's people have done two things against Him. First, they have forsaken God who is the source of life, and He gave them a commandment, saying: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt' (Exod. XX, 2). Second, it is written in the same place: 'You shall have no other gods before me'; for this reason they have followed demons, whom He calls broken cisterns, because they are unable to keep God's commandments. And this must be noted, that the fountain is perpetual, and it has life-giving waters. But the cisterns and lakes, either from torrents or from muddy waters, are filled with earth and rain. The gates of heaven are called those, of which it is also written in the twenty-third psalm: Lift up your heads, O gates, and the king of glory will enter. Concerning which the Septuagint translated: Lift up your gates, O princes: of which more will be said in its proper place. And what Aquila and Symmachus interpreted as 'coelos', and LXX and Theodotion as 'coelum', should not be confused. For in Hebrew, 'Samaim' is a common noun, and both the plural and singular forms are referred to as 'coeli' with the same name, just like Thebes, Athens, and Salonae.

O blessed change! Once the body wept, but now laughs forevermore. Once it desired the broken cisterns of which the prophet speaks, but now it has been satisfied in the Lord, the fountain of life.

Let him "possess his vessel in sanctification and honor," let him drink of his own wells, not out of the dissolute cisterns of the harlots that cannot hold within them the pure waters of chastity.

Is he not one who bewitches the sheep of our patriarch, that they may not drink from the pure water that springs up unto life everlasting but may draw down on themselves the saying of the prophet: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water"? Because they should confess that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, as the divine Word teaches and as they who have pondered it more deeply have taught.

"He has opened a pit and dug it." We do not find the name of "pit" ever assigned in the divine Scriptures to something good or a "well" of water to something bad. That into which Joseph was thrown by his brothers is a pit. There is a slaughter "from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the captive woman that was in prison." In the Psalms, "I am counted among those who go down to the pit." In Jeremiah it is said, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

But since many heresies have existed and the people of God have been torn apart at the instigation of demons, the truth must be briefly exposed by us and placed in its own peculiar dwelling place, so that if any one shall desire to draw the water of life, he may not be born to broken cisterns that hold no water but may know the abundant fountain of God. Watered by this fountain, he may enjoy perpetual light.

And our hearts are thus circumcised from evil, so that we are happy to die for the name of the good Rock, which causes living water to burst forth for the hearts of those who by Him have loved the Father of all, and which gives those who are willing to drink of the water of life. But you do not comprehend me when I speak these things; for you have not understood what it has been prophesied that Christ would do, and you do not believe us who draw your attention to what has been written. For Jeremiah thus cries: "Woe unto you! because you have forsaken the living fountain, and have digged for yourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. Shall there be a wilderness where Mount Zion is, because I gave Jerusalem a bill of divorce in your sight?"

Hence also Jacob, as I remarked before, being himself a type of Christ, had married the two handmaids of his two free wives, and of them begat sons, for the purpose of indicating beforehand that Christ would receive even all those who amongst Japheth's race are descendants of Canaan, equally with the free, and would have the children fellow-heirs. And we are such; but you cannot comprehend this, because you cannot drink of the living fountain of God, but of broken cisterns which can hold no water, as the Scripture says. But they are cisterns broken, and holding no water, which your own teachers have digged, as the Scripture also expressly asserts, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."

Nor do we receive that useless baptism of cisterns, for it has nothing to do with this baptism of life. Wherefore also God has announced that you have forsaken Him, the living fountain, and digged for yourselves broken cisterns which can hold no water.

By reason, therefore, of this laver of repentance and knowledge of God, which has been ordained on account of the transgression of God's people, as Isaiah cries, we have believed, and testify that that very baptism which he announced is alone able to purify those who have repented; and this is the water of life. But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves are broken and profitless to you. For what is the use of that baptism which cleanses the flesh and body alone? Baptize the soul from wrath and from covetousness, from envy, and from hatred; and, lo! the body is pure.

When we were together in council, dearest brethren, we read your letter which you wrote to us concerning those who seem to be baptized by heretics and schismatics, (asking) whether, when the), come to the Catholic Church, which is one,4 they ought to be baptized. On which matter, although you yourselves hold thereupon the truth and certainty of the Catholic rule, yet since you have thought that of our mutual love we ought to be consulted, we put forward our opinion, not as a new one,5 but we join with you in equal agreement, in an opinion long since decreed by our predecessors, and observed by us,-judging, namely, and holding it for certain that no one can be baptized abroad outside the Church, since there is one baptism appointed in the holy Church. And it is written in the words of the Lord, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out broken cisterns, which can hold no water."

Still the Anomoeans have another well-rehearsed argument. What is that? Scripture says, "God is spirit." Tell me, then, does that bring his essence to light? Will anyone accept that argument if he has even drawn a little way near to the doors of the divine Scriptures? According to that argument, God will also be fire, just as it has been written that God is spirit, so has it been written, "Our God is a consuming fire," and again, "a fountain of living water." Not only will God be a spirit and a fountain and a fire; he will also be a soul, a wind, a human mind, and other things far more absurd than these.

Is it right to say that what is God's offspring and proper to him exists out of nothing? Or, is it reasonable in the very idea that what is from God has accrued to him, that someone should dare to say that the Son does not always exist? For in this again the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends human thoughts, that we become parents of our own children in time, since we ourselves first did not exist and then came into being. But God, in that he always exists, is always Father of the Son.

So she went down to the fountain of wisdom, whether the Church or the soul, to fill her entire vessel and to draw from the pure disciplines of wisdom that the Jews refused to draw from the flowing fountain. Who is this fountain, listen to the one saying: "They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water." To this fountain ran the thirsting soul of the prophets, as David also says: "My soul thirsts for the living God"; so that it could quench its thirst with the richness of divine knowledge and wash away the blood of foolishness with the flow of spiritual waters.

Of living waters - A metaphor taken from springs, called living, because they never cease, or intermit; such had God's care and kindness been over them. Cisterns - Either their idols, which are empty vain things, that never answer expectation, or the Assyrians, and Egyptians. Indeed all other supports, that are trusted to besides God, are but broken vessels.

For my people have committed two evils,....

There is in him an all-sufficiency of grace and strength; all our springs are in him and our streams from him; to forsake him is, in effect, to deny this.

"Me they have forsaken, the Fountain," &c. Joh 4:14). broken cisterns--tanks for rain water, common in the East, where wells are scarce. The tanks not only cannot give forth an ever-flowing fresh supply as fountains can, but cannot even retain the water poured into them; the stonework within being broken, the earth drinks up the collected water.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

Two evils - First, they forsook God, the Fountain of life, light, prosperity, and happiness. Secondly, they hewed out broken cisterns; they joined themselves to idols, from whom they could receive neither temporal nor spiritual good! Their conduct was the excess of folly and blindness. What we call here broken cisterns, means more properly such vessels as were ill made, not staunch, ill put together, so that the water leaked through them.