'Cistern' in the Bible
Nevertheless a spring or a cistern (reservoir) collecting water shall be clean; but whoever touches one of these carcasses shall be unclean.
Then Jehu said, “Take them alive.” So they took them alive and [later] slaughtered them at the well by the place of the sand heaps, forty-two men; he left none of them [alive].
Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: “Surrender to me and come out to [meet] me, and every man may eat from his own vine and fig tree, and every man may drink the waters of his own well,
Drink water from your own cistern [of a pure marriage relationship]And fresh running water from your own well.
Earnestly remember your Creator before the silver cord [of life] is broken, or the golden bowl is crushed, or the pitcher at the fountain is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed;
“Whose collapse is like the smashing of a potter’s jar,Crushed so savagelythat there cannot be found among its pieces a potsherd [large enough]To take [coals of] fire from a fireplace,Or to scoop water from a cistern.”
Do not listen to Hezekiah,’ for this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Make peace with me and come out to me, and each one of you will eat from his own vine and each from his own fig tree and each [one of you] drink from the water of his own cistern,
So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Malchijah the king’s son, which was in the court of the guardhouse; and they let Jeremiah down [into the cistern] with ropes. Now there was no water in the cistern but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.
Now Ebed-melech the Ethiopian (Cushite), one of the eunuchs who was in the king’s palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the cistern, and while the king was sitting in the Gate of Benjamin,
“My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet whom they have thrown into the cistern; and he will die [of hunger] where he is because of the famine, for there is no more bread in the city.”
Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, “Take thirty men from here with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.”
So Ebed-melech took the men with him and went into the palace of the king to a place under the storeroom and took from there old rags and worn-out clothes and let them down by ropes into the cistern to Jeremiah.
So they pulled Jeremiah up with the ropes and took him up out of the cistern; and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guardhouse.
Yet when they came into the city, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and the men who were with him slaughtered them and threw them into the cistern (underground water reservoir).
Now the cistern into which Ishmael had thrown all the corpses of the men whom he had killed along with Gedaliah was the one which King Asa [of Judah] had made [about three hundred years earlier] on account of King Baasha of Israel [believing that Baasha would lay siege to Mizpah]. Ishmael the son of Nethaniah filled it with [the bodies of] those who were killed.