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Jeremiah 2 · Grade 5

Two Evils

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Read and Think

Jeremiah 2 opens with tender memory. God recalled the kindness of Israel's youth, their love as a bride, how they followed him in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown. Israel was holiness to Yahweh, the first fruits of his increase. The rest of the chapter reads like a case in a courtroom, as God lays out his charge against his people.

God asked what wrong their fathers had found in him, that they went far away and walked after worthless vanity. He had brought them into a plentiful land, but they defiled it. Priests, rulers and prophets all failed. God invited them to search from the islands of Kittim to Kedar: no nation had ever traded its gods, even though those gods were not gods at all. Yet God's people had changed their glory for that which doesn't profit.

At the center stands the image of two evils. They forsook God, the spring of living waters, and dug cisterns that cannot hold water. Running spring water was precious in a dry land; a cracked cistern held only stale dregs, if anything. The chapter goes on to describe the people's restless turning to Egypt and Assyria, their idols of wood and stone, and their claim to be innocent. God said that a nation that rejects him will be ashamed of the very powers it trusted.

Show What You Know

  1. How does the chapter open?

  2. What did God say no other nation had done?

  3. Why is a spring better than a cistern in a dry land?

  4. What did the people claim even after turning away?

Crossword

42351

Across

  1. And cut out ____ for themselves.
  2. Yet I had planted you a noble ____.
  3. The spring of ____ waters.

Down

  1. The ____ of living waters.
  2. To drink the ____ of the Shihor.

Think About It

  1. Why do you think people leave something good for something that cannot satisfy?

  2. What helps you keep going back to God as your spring of living water?

Memory Verse

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and cut out cisterns for themselves: broken cisterns that can’t hold water.

Jeremiah 2:13 (WEB)

Copy It

Prayer

Dear God, thank You for being my living water. Help me . Amen.

Take It Home

For families: talk about these together.

  • Why did they claim to be innocent?
  • How do people dig broken cisterns today?
  • What is one way you could live out this chapter this week?

Scripture: World English Bible, public domain, eBible.org. © 2026 The Daily Rooted. Free to print and copy for church and home use; not for resale. Original line art.