A review of Israel’s backsliding from the beginning.
- According to this section, what are the components of backsliding?
Compare Israel’s beginnings with her later condition.
Is any of this story true of you? Cf. Gal. 5:7. - 2:12, 13. ‘Living’ water means fresh water from an ever-flowing spring. Cf. 6:7; John 4:13, 14. What do the ‘spring of living water’ and the ‘broken cisterns’ stand for in spiritual experience? Do you take as serious a view of backsliding as God does?
- What evil results does Jeremiah say have already followed from the nation’s forgetfulness of God?
Notes:
- 2:10. ‘Kittim’ was Cyprus and western coastlands and ‘Kedar’ was a tribe east of Jordan. The verse means ‘search from east to west…’
- 2:16. ‘Memphis’ and ‘Tahpanhes’: cities of Egypt.
- 2:25. ‘Do not run thy foot bare, and thy throat dry in the eager pursuit of strange gods’ (Driver).
- 3:4. An allusion probably to the feigned penitence of many at the time of Josiah’s reform. Cf. 3:10; 2 Chr. 34:33.