Cistern

A cistern was an underground reservoir cut into rock or constructed from masonry to collect and store rainwater in the water-scarce terrain of ancient Palestine. They were essential to daily life in a land where natural springs were limited and rainfall seasonal. Cisterns could be privately owned — Proverbs 5:15 uses a man's own cistern as a metaphor for the fidelity of marriage — or public, serving towns and military installations. Isaiah's description of Assyrian propaganda promised the besieged Jerusalemites every man's own cistern of water (Isaiah 36:16) as an inducement to surrender.

In prophetic literature the cistern becomes a powerful metaphor. Jeremiah condemns Israel for forsaking God, the spring of living water, and hewing out cracked cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13). The prophet Jeremiah was himself thrown into a muddy cistern as a means of silencing his message (Jeremiah 38:6). Joseph was cast into a dry cistern by his brothers (Genesis 37:24). The contrast between a reliable spring and a leaking cistern illustrates the spiritual tragedy of substituting human alternatives for the living God.