Cistern

A cistern is a human-made basin or reservoir used to collect and store water. Stone cisterns coated with lime plaster became common in Palestine during the thirteenth century BC.

People would use leaky or abandoned cisterns as burial, torture, or prison chambers. They lowered the prophet Jeremiah into a dungeon that was a muddy cistern (Jeremiah 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 very important in the dry regions of the ancient Near East. King Uzziah of Judah dug many cisterns in places that had no springs or wells (2 Chronicles 26:10). An Assyrian commander mocked King Hezekiah and the people of Judah. He promised that if they surrendered, each person would drink water from his own cistern (Isaiah 36:16; compare 2 Kings 18:31). Earlier, Moses had told the Israelites that they would receive cisterns they had not dug. These cisterns would be part of God’s blessing in the promised land (Deuteronomy 6:11).