Committed two evils, viz. remarkable ones, and with a witness. Living waters; a metaphor taken from springs, called living here, and Genesis 26:19, and elsewhere, because they never cease or intermit; such had God's care and kindness been over and to them; see on Isaiah 58:11; his Spirit continually proceeding from the Father and the Son to refresh their consciences. Compare 1 Thessalonians 4:10, 1 Thessalonians 7:38,39. Cisterns: it is doubled, to show the multitude of their shifts; and broken is added, to show the helplessness of them, as being able to hold no water; but when a man hath made many hard shifts to get water, he cannot keep it, but it dries away; or if it abide, proves unwholesome: by which understand either their idols, which are empty, vain things, that never answer expectation; or the Assyrians and Egyptians, as Jeremiah 2:18, which proved but broken reeds, and as all other supports or props, friends, traditions, merits, &c. are that are trusted to besides God; they are but cisterns at the best, whose water will putrify, or broken, riven vessels, through which they will soak, and leave nothing but mud and dirt behind them.
Related Commentaries of Jeremiah 2:13
Jeremiah 2:13
13 For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.