_Therefore_--on account of this amazing ingratitude of your forefathers,--_I will again plead_ (reason, argue forensically) _with you_ (the present generation in whom their guilt repeats itself) _saith Iahvah, and with your sons' sons_ (who will inherit your sins) _will I plead_. The nation is conceived as a moral unity, the characteristics of which are exemplified in each successive generation. To all Israel, past, present, and future, Iahvah will vindicate his own righteousness. _For cross_ (the sea) _to the coasts of the Citieans_ (the people of Citium in Cyprus) _and see; and to Kedar_ (the rude tribes of the Syrian desert) _send ye, and mark well, and see whether there hath arisen a case like this. Hath a nation changed gods--albeit they are no-gods? Yet My people hath changed his_ (true) _glory for that which helpeth not_ (or is worthless). _Upheave, ye heavens_ (שמו שמים, a fine paronomasia), _at this, and shudder_ (_and_) _be petrified_ (מְאֹד חַֽרְבוּ Ges., "be sore amazed" = שמם; but Hitzig "be dry" = stiff and motionless, like syn. יבש in 1 Kings xiii. 4), _saith Iahvah; for two evil things hath My people done: Me they have forsaken--a Fountain of living water--to hew them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot_ (imperf. = potential) _hold water_ (Heb. _the_ waters: generic article) (vv. 9-13). In these five verses, the apostasy of Israel from his own God is held up as a fact unique in history--unexampled and inexplicable by comparison with the doings of other nations. Whether you look westward or eastward, across the sea to Cyprus, or beyond Gilead to the barbarous tribes of the Cedrei (Ps. cxx. 5), nowhere will you find a heathen people that has changed its native worship for another; and if you did find such, it would be no precedent or palliation of Israel's behaviour. The heathen in adopting a new worship simply exchanges one superstition for another; the objects of his devotion are "non-gods" (ver. 11). The heinousness and the eccentricity of Israel's conduct lies in the fact that he has bartered truth for falsehood; he has exchanged "his Glory"--whom Amos (viii. 7) calls the Pride (A.V. Excellency) of Jacob--for a useless idol; an object which the prophet elsewhere calls "The Shame" (iii. 24, xi. 13), because it can only bring shame and confusion upon those whose hopes depend upon it. The wonder of the thing might well be supposed to strike the pure heavens, the silent witnesses of it, with blank astonishment (cf. a similar appeal in Deut. iv. 26, xxxi. 28, xxxii. 1, where the earth is added). For the evil is not single but twofold. With the rejection of truth goes the adoption of error; and both are evils. Not only has Israel turned his back upon "a fountain of living waters;" he has also "hewn him out cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot hold water." The "broken cisterns" are, of course, the idols which Israel made to himself. As a cistern full of cracks and fissures disappoints