A review of Israel’s backsliding from the beginning.

1. 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. 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?
3. What evil results does Jeremiah say have already followed from the nation’s forgetfulness of God?

Notes:

1. 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. 2:16. ‘Memphis’ and ‘Tahpanhes’: cities of Egypt.
3. 2:25. ‘Do not run thy foot bare, and thy throat dry in the eager pursuit of strange gods’ (Driver).
4. 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.