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CISTERN
Place to store water; a man-made catch basin or reservoir. Stone cisterns plastered with lime came into common use in Palestine in the 13th century BC.
Leaky or abandoned cisterns were often used as burial, torture, or prison chambers. For example, the dungeon into which the prophet Jeremiah was lowered was an abandoned muddy cistern (Jer 38:6). Ishmael threw the bodies of 70 murdered men into a large cistern originally constructed by King Asa for a wartime water supply (41:4-9).
Cisterns were vitally important in the arid Near East. King Uzziah of Judah is described as hewing out many cisterns in areas where springs or wells were lacking (2 Chr 26:10). An Assyrian general taunting King Hezekiah and his people promised that, if they would submit, everyone would drink the water of his own cistern (Is 36:16; cf. 2 Kgs 18:31). Much earlier, Moses had assured the Israelites that cisterns already hewn out would be among God’s blessing in the Promised Land (Dt 6:11).
Figurative Use of “Cistern”
The word “cistern” is also used figuratively in the Bible. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God rebuked Israel for rejecting him, the “fountain of living waters.” Instead, they had “dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all” (Jer 2:13, NLT). Ecclesiastes 12:6 refers to a broken wheel at a cistern as a figurative description of old age.