“Do so because my people have committed a double wrong: they have rejected me, the fountain of life-giving water, ¹  and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water.”

Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. ¹ 

So they pulled Jeremiah up from the cistern with ropes. Jeremiah, however, still remained confined ¹  to the courtyard of the guardhouse.

So the officials ¹  took Jeremiah and put him in the cistern ²  of Malkijah, one of the royal princes, ³  that was in the courtyard of the guardhouse. There was no water in the cistern, only mud. So when they lowered Jeremiah into the cistern with ropes he sank in the mud. ⁴ 

Then they took him and threw him into the cistern. (Now the cistern was empty; ¹  there was no water in it.)

However, a spring or a cistern which collects water ¹  will be clean, but one who touches their carcass will be unclean.

The leading men of the cities send their servants for water. They go to the cisterns, ¹  but they do not find any water there. They return with their containers ²  empty. Disappointed and dismayed, they bury their faces in their hands. ³ 

An Ethiopian, Ebed Melech, ¹  a court official in the royal palace, heard that Jeremiah had been put ²  in the cistern. While the king was holding court ³  at the Benjamin Gate,

Then the king gave Ebed Melech the Ethiopian the following order: “Take thirty ¹  men with you from here and go pull the prophet Jeremiah out of the cistern before he dies.”

But as soon as they were inside the city, Ishmael son of Nethaniah and the men who were with him slaughtered them and threw their bodies ¹  in a cistern.

Now the cistern where Ishmael threw all the dead bodies of those he had killed was a large one ¹  that King Asa had constructed as part of his defenses against King Baasha of Israel. ²  Ishmael son of Nethaniah filled it with dead bodies. ³ 

The men of Israel realized they had a problem because their army was hard pressed. So the army hid in caves, thickets, cliffs, strongholds, ¹  and cisterns.

“Your royal Majesty, those men have been very wicked in all that they have done to the prophet Jeremiah. They have thrown him into a cistern and he is sure to die of starvation there because there is no food left in the city. ¹ 

So Ebed Melech took the men with him and went to a room under the treasure room in the palace. ¹  He got some worn-out clothes and old rags ²  from there and let them down by ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern.

before the silver cord is removed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the well, ¹  or the water wheel ²  is broken at the cistern –

It shatters in pieces like a clay jar, so shattered to bits that none of it can be salvaged. ¹  Among its fragments one cannot find a shard large enough ²  to scoop a hot coal from a fire ³  or to skim off water from a cistern.” ⁴ 

Don’t listen to Hezekiah!’ For this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Send me a token of your submission and surrender to me. ¹  Then each of you may eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern,

He built towers in the desert and dug many cisterns, for he owned many herds in the lowlands ¹  and on the plain. He had workers in the fields and vineyards in the hills and in Carmel, ²  for he loved agriculture. ³ 

Later Reuben returned to the cistern to find that Joseph was not in it! ¹  He tore his clothes,

houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill,