January-March 2003
Volume 6 Number 2.3
Locating Jerusalem's Fountain Gate
When Nehemiah left the City of David in the middle of the night to inspect the old city wall he went to the Gihon Spring. What was he looking for? In this second installment of the Locating the Fountain Gate series Bill Lavers wants you to know.
by Bill Lavers
PART II The Inspection
Arriving at the Gihon Spring Nehemiah made a secret inspection of the area around the old Fountain Gate and the King�s Pool. There is little doubt that this inspection related in some way to the David�s Tomb complex. During the Babylonian siege had something become
disturbed which opened, or in some way violated, its means of access?The Stairs at the Gihon Spring
Nehemiah 2:15 records only that Nehemiah
viewed the wall when he reached the area of the Fountain Gate. Nevertheless, he may have ascended the stairs leading up to the wall at that point to conduct a closer and more detailed inspection. There is much about these stairs that remains unclear. Indeed, are these the ones to which reference is made in chapter 2 and verse 14 of the Song of Songs? Here Solomon refers to clefts (or fissures) of the rock in the secret places of the stairs. Although written in the form of a love-poem, there is no doubt that mystery shrouds itself within its text.
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The specific intent of the Song of Songs, called by some the Canticle of Canticles, remains to be understood. Its vagueness makes it one of the most mysterious of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures. According to Kinlaw, writing in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, the interpretation "options are so broad that some have despaired" (Kinlaw 1991:1202). Delitzsch described it as "the most obscure book in the Old Testament" (Delitzsch 1885:1).
First-century Jewish scholars believed it was of an allegorical nature (Boadt 1984:485-486; Kinlaw 1991:1202; Young 1964:333). The Targum construes the Song of Songs as an allegory of the marital love of Yahweh and Israel. In the synagogues the Jews read the Song of Songs on the eighth day of Passover, the second annual Sabbath at the end of the days of unleavened bread, celebrating Yahweh's choice of Israel to be His spouse.Of the thousand and more songs credited to Solomon (I Kings 4:32), one wonders why the preservation of Song of Songs 2 as "the crown of them all " (
Keil and Delitzsch 1976:3). One has but to read this song in an unbiased and discerning manner to sense various references to the important historic and geographical features contained within it. These are features associated with the area of the city of David around the Gihon Spring and the steps leading into the city. In no way should we minimize or fail to recognize the importance of these cryptic implications. They could be vital keys to certain of the mysteries enveloping this region.Whatever mystery enshrouds the area of the Gihon, there is little doubt that the mission Nehemiah carried out somehow related to it. The sense of urgency with which he made his inspection alone bears that out. In no way, therefore, should it be trivialised or considered inconsequential. Doubtlessly, an intimate inspection needed to be made of
that which required his immediate attention, so that whatever the required work he could assess it and carry it out with a minimum of delay. That this venue was in the immediate vicinity of the Fountain Gate and the King�s Pool is unmistakable from Nehemiah 2:14. Beyond those few recorded details, however, there is little more that we can sense from the text.The other important factor, of course, is the secrecy with which Nehemiah conducted this clandestine operation. No one, other than those few who accompanied him on that midnight foray, were aware of where he went, or what he did. As verse 16 goes on to say, following his return: �The officials did not know where I had gone or what I had done; nor had I as yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials or the rest who did the work" (Nehemiah 2:16). The fact that he ultimately did inform them, can safely be assumed by those two words: "as yet." After how long an interval, however, there is no way of knowing.
The next reference to the Fountain Gate occurs at Nehemiah 3. This section of Nehemiah contains a description of the construction of walls and gates, those performing the work, and the portions of wall and the gates on which they worked.
According to Kathleen Kenyon this passage discloses the efficient gang system used by Nehemiah and shows how in the second stretch the record delimits the sections assigned to the various groups (Kenyon 1974:185). She wrote:A long catalogue of the sections built by individuals, leaders, towns, is based on lengths of the wall defined by gates with recognizable location....
There is then a clear break. Such defining points thereafter as are given are the houses of individual householders... (Kenyon 1974:184).
Before dealing with those verses which pertain to the Fountain Gate, however, and with the important part of that eastern wall which extended above the Gihon spring as far as the Water Gate, we need to consider an interesting detail that Nehemiah included within the context of verse 13.
Reconstructing the City Wall and Gates
After briefly alluding to the repair and reconstruction of the Valley Gate, he adds the point that the same party, under the leadership of Hanun, went on to repair the one thousand cubit length of wall that extended southward as far as the Dung Gate
(Nehemiah 3:13). Now that was a considerable length of wall for one group to be responsible, especially when compared to the far smaller sections to the north around the site of the Temple. This section was close to one-third of a mile long. What is the implication?There is, really, only one rational
deduction we can draw from the salient fact given. The amount of damage sustained by that 1/3-mile length of wall was relatively minimal.F1 It was, therefore, well within the capabilities of Hanun�s group to effect whatever repairs were needed in this section without requiring more work than would be fair. That, however, is not the only implication. There is an obvious inference that, had it been considered by earlier researchers, would have enabled them to conclude that the Fountain Gate would have to have been in the area of the Gihon Spring, rather than positioned close to the Dung Gate where it is now almost universally accepted.The minimal damage to that long section of wall, bounding the western side of Jerusalem south of the Temple site,
infers that the Babylonians were far less concerned about breaking into the city there than they were about taking the Temple complex to the north. Comparing the amount of repair work on the sections of the wall around the Temple to that required by the wall of the city to the south it becomes apparent where the Babylonian forces encountered the greatest opposition and resistance from the Jews. Kenyon attests to this. "Physiographically," she wrote, "only the north side was weak, and it was very likely that the attack came from that direction, as it did in the Roman destruction of the first century A.D." (Kenyon 1974:168).It was the Temple the Jews determined to defend. So it was against the walls directly surrounding it, and especially against its
weaker northerly approaches, that the Babylonians directed the greatest pressure and applied their major destructive force. They knew the futility of making any attempt against the southern wall of the Temple. It was an almost impregnable barrier. So what need was there in dissipating their strength and risking their manpower in breeching the wall surrounding the city of David to the south? So long as they kept a strict watch on those southern ramparts to prevent anyone from escaping, they could utilize the main body of their invasion force against the Temple and the walls directly adjacent to it. In essence, the Babylonian general erected siege-works about the city and simply waited for famine to reduce the capacity of the population to defend themselves. Kenyon says:It was apparent from the sequence in the account in II Kings 25 that famine was the main factor in the fall of the city. Only when the inhabitants were reduced by famine was a breach made in the walls. (Kenyon 1974:168.)
After the city fell the Babylonians plundered it and "burned the house of the LORD, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire" (II Kings 25:9). The sense is that the Babylonians undertook a selective destruction focusing on public buildings and the homes of the elite. The post-war reduction of the city walls by the Babylonians (II Kings 25:10) left Jerusalem defenseless. The focus of this effort would have been on the demolition of the city gates. The fact that Nehemiah was able to reconstruct the city walls and gates in 52 days "shows that Nehemiah was able to base his work on very considerable surviving elements of the wall of the period of the monarchy" (Kenyon 1974:182).
The length of wall between the Dung Gate and the Fountain Gate is not referred to in Nehemiah 3:14-15. It is a complete omission from the text. That means, of course, that in literary terms we have no idea whatsoever of the distance that separated the Fountain Gate from the Dung Gate. It could have been but a short distance to the north, and therefore precisely where Raymond Weill inferred, following his 1923 discovery of an ancient staircase in the south eastern corner of the City of David.
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We must ask ourselves this question, however, if we want to be truly honest with the Hebrew Scriptures. From a biblical perspective, are we left with no sure knowledge of the site of this most important gate, whose name alone precludes any other location for it
, in the closest proximity to the source of water from which it derives its name? Since the Gihon is called (1) the Fountain of YHVH, (2) the Fountain of Israel, (3) the Fountain of the High Priest, (4) the Fountain of Life, (5) the Virgin�s Fountain, (6) the Fountain of the Steps, and (7) the Fountain of Siloah, then by logical deduction, should we not find the Fountain Gate located close by that vitally important spring of water and not in some isolated part of the wall many hundreds of meters to the south?By making specific reference to the length of the western wall that lay between the Valley Gate and the Dung Gate, there is no doubt in my mind that Nehemiah intimated that a similar distance lay between the Dung Gate and the Fountain Gate. While the western course suffered only minimal damage during the Babylonian siege of the city the eastern course supporting the Millo did suffer irreparable damage. Nehemiah chose not to rebuild the Millo nor this section of the Jebusite-Davidic wall. Instead he had a new eastern wall built along the eastern boundary of crest of the hill. "It is absolutely certain that no buildings on the slope, post-Exilic, Hellenistic, or Roman," says Kenyon, "succeeded the great tumble of stones that marked the final collapse of the Jebusite-Israelite terraces" (Kenyon 1974:182). This abandoned sector was where Nehemiah encountered the debris which caused him to backtrack and take an alternative route to the Fountain Gate by way of the wadi that ran through the Kidron Valley.
Weill's Stairs Only One of Several
Nehemiah neither divulged the exact location of King David�s Tomb beneath the City of David nor did he explicitly record any interest in it. Nevertheless, the
scriptures we have so far discussed, from the time of their writing, have provided sufficient details for rightly locating the Fountain Gate near the Gihon Spring. Researchers, however, have consistently failed to take into account the underlying evidence in Nehemiah. They merely assume the stairs found by Raymond Weill at the south eastern corner of the city of David in 1923 to be those referred to in Nehemiah 3:15. The result was the obfuscation of the tomb's exact location and explains why, today, the search for it has been chiefly concentrated to the southern end of that south-east ridge.Weill searched for a flight of steps in the south-east corner of the City of David long before he discovered them. Ten years earlier, in the year prior to the outbreak of the First World War, he found eight tombs in the same general area. He automatically associated them with the sepulchres of David referred to in Nehemiah 3:16. He had already assured himself that he was indeed working in the region of which Nehemiah had written, because the pool that Hezekiah constructed in the south-west part of the city had long been called the Pool of Siloam. When he discovered the stairs, therefore, he at once declared them to be none other than those spoken of in the latter part Nehemiah 3:15 which says: ��the wall of the pool of Shelah by the king�s garden, and unto the stairs that go down from the city of David.� This was a classic case of self-fulfilled prophecy.
In his book, Jerusalem in the Old Testament: Researches and Theories, Jan J. Simons made similar sweeping conclusions about this staircase. He positively identified it as the identical stairs of the City of David spoken of by Nehemiah. Simons wrote:
No doubt the discovery of the ancient staircase may be regarded as a biblical find of the first rank, because it cannot be questioned that it is identical with the staircase mentioned by Nehemiah in two of his three descriptions of the walls of Jerusalem as �the stairs of the City of David� (12:37) or as �the steps that go down from the City of David� (3:15). No words can indicate more aptly than those of Nehemiah the staircase, 11 metres high, discovered by Weill precisely at the point best adapted to Nehemiah�s descriptions of the course of the wall. We shall likewise find a biblical name for the little gate at the foot of the staircase (emphasis mine). (Simons 1952:96.)
Now before anyone decides to jump on the bandwagon, blindly accepting the above as indisputable evidence of the true site for the stairs and therefore for the Gate of the Fountain and other geographical features of which Nehemiah wrote, let him or her consider a certain logical factor universally relevant to all towns and cities that are built on and above steep hillsides, and particularly any which could possibly compare to the almost precipitous nature of the sides of the City of David. Such urban conurbations require not just one flight of steps, but as many as necessary to afford ease of access to the various levels of habitation. To say that the discovery of one set of stairs in the City of David was unquestionably the staircase referred to by Nehemiah is ludicrous to say the least. Moreover, to attempt to substantiate the claim by holding that the stairs were precisely at the point best-adapted to Nehemiah�s description of the course of the wall, shows how easy it is to misguidedly ascribe specific geographical locations to physical features sans a meticulous deliberation of the scriptures.
The King's Garden Borders the Fountain Gate
Nehemiah refers to the location of the King's Garden by the pool of Shelah. Nehemiah 3:15 reads:
Shallum the son of Col-hozeh, the official of the district of Mizpah, repaired the Fountain Gate. He built it, covered it and hung its doors with its bolts and its bars, and the wall of the Pool of Shelah at the king's garden as far as the steps that descend from the city of David. (Nehemiah 3:15.)
One thing to particularly take note of in this verse is that the Fountain Gate was not simply repaired, as was the case with the others. It was also covered. The NIV translates it as "He rebuilt it, roofing it over and putting its doors and bolts and bars in place." Are we then reading of some type of overlay comparable with the gates of the Temple courts?
There are two subtle points for us to consider in this text. First, archaeological excavation has shown this section of the wall to be along the eastern side of the top of the hill. It was a new course leading to an existing gate into the city above the steps from below. Nehemiah abandoned the old wall which had supported the Millo and was more adjacent to the spring. Second, from a top of the hill perspective Nehemiah would write of the steps that go down from or "descend from the City of David." If the gate were at the bottom of the stairs either near the Gihon Spring in the abandoned section of wall or at the south eastern corner of the city as held by Raymond Weill one would expect Nehemiah to have written about stairs which "go up to" or "ascend" to the City of David. In the context of these two points Nehemiah's "Fountain Gate" was not only above the steps leading down to the Gihon Spring but also a major covered entry point into the city. It is important to note here that this Fountain Gate was not a Jebusite-Israelite gate, which in The Mountain of the Lord (Mazar 1975) Mazar mused might be the Water Gate, in the abandoned course of the wall near the spring. W. Harold Mare explains:
The Water Gate is presumably the one in the eastern wall leading to the Spring Gihon. Nehemiah 3:26 describes it as being "toward the east." Mazar notes that in Nehemiah's time Gihon no longer served as an important source of water, but still "the site retained its hallowed associations with the past," evidenced by the people's gathering before the Water Gate to hear Ezra read the law of the Lord (Neh. 8:1-16). Nehemiah 12:37 mentions the house of David as being in the vicinity of the Fountain Gate and the Water Gate. This may well have been the site of David's former palace. Mazar comments that this verse suggests the possibility "that the Water gate had already been abandoned in Nehemiah's time, when the new city wall was built higher up on the crest of the ridge." The pottery finds there dated to the Persia period confirm that the wall belongs to this period. (Mare 1987:125; Mazar 1975:195, 198. See also Kenyon 1974:182-183.)
Repair, we are told, was also made to the wall of the Pool of Siloam, which was by the King�s Garden, and as far as the steps going down from the City of David. This is, indeed, a key statement, and one from which we can learn a great deal when it is analysed and considered in relation to what we have already learned. First and foremost, however, it must be clearly understood that neither the Pool of Siloam, nor the King�s Garden to which Nehemiah is here referring, were down at the southern end of the City of David. It is necessary to stress this point, because that is where they are traditionally believed to have been; and particularly so since Raymond Weill discovered a set of steps in that area.
Here is a brief extract of what Mare, writing in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, had to say about the King�s Garden:
. (Mare 1992:48.)A garden area in the Kidron Valley near the City of David, just below the terraced structures of the city, near the wall of the Pool of Siloam...It no doubt, extended just E and S of the City of David to take advantage of the intermittent flow of water coming down from the Kidron brook
Mare placed the King�s Garden towards the south and outside of the city and in the valley itself, being watered by the brook from the Gihon.
He assumes "the King's Pool�that is, the Pool of Siloam�by the King's Garden, presumably [was] in the lower part of the Kidron Valley, which was watered by the overflow from the Pool of Siloam" (Mare 1987:123). I do not disclaim that there could well have been gardens in the valley to the south of the city. It certainly would have been a well-watered area. The particular King�s Garden that Nehemiah was speaking of, however, was not one of them, nor was the Pool of Siloam to be found there. The pool that Hezekiah made on the west side of the city to receive water from the Gihon is nowhere referred to by that name in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is unhelpful for writers to refer to it as such today.The Pool of Siloam, together with the King�s Garden, were both in the area of the Gihon spring. So too was the Tower of Siloam, as Professor George Wesley Buchanan correctly states in a paper soon to be published in Expository Times, entitled "The Tower of Siloam." Describing recently discovered remains of this tower, he said:
02.) (emphasis mine).The tower of Siloam was comparatively small, compared to the huge towers in the Old City of Jerusalem. The remaining walls or footings that have been recovered are not as big around as a normal farm silo. It was situated along the old wall on the inside, very near the spring of Siloam. It was undoubtedly constructed to defend the spring. It existed in NT times and is reported in a chreia in Luke. (Buchanan 20
The specific passage to which he refers, of course, is Luke 13:4, where Christ spoke of the 18 people killed when the Tower of Siloam fell. On another occasion, as recorded in John 9:1-7, we have the account of Jesus� encounter with a man who had been blind from birth. Jesus had just left the temple at the time, having very nearly been stoned by the Jews. Knowing that the works of God were to be made manifest in this man, and that in the Father�s eyes he, himself, was the light of the world, Jesus anointed the man�s eyes with the clay he had formed from soil he had mixed with his own spittle, and told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man did not have to go way off to the southern end of the city, because that pool was just a short distance down from the eastern gate of the Temple. We know this from the account given in Sukkah 4:9-10 of the Mishnah (, which describes the important ritualistic observance known as "The
Water Libation" (see Neusner 1988:288); Edersheim 1904:280). Each year, early in the morning of the 15th Tishri, the first day of the annual Feast of Tabernacles, while the morning sacrifice was being prepared, a priest, accompanied by a joyous procession with music, would leave from that eastern gate of the temple and go down to the Pool of Siloam. There, he would draw water from the pool into a golden pitcher, and return to the Temple by the same set of stairs and the same path by which he descended.In no way would he and his exultant retinue have travelled a third of a mile to the south-west end of the city to draw that pure ceremonial water from a reservoir made specifically for the general use of the city. The symbolism of that ancient ceremony, echoing Isaiah 12:3, would in itself preclude any but the purest water to be used on that occasion. Alfred Edersheim in The Temple: Its Ministry and Services explains:
distinctly: �Why is the name of it called The drawing out of water? Because of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, according to what is said: �With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells (or the fountains) of salvation."' Hence, also, the feast and the peculiar joyousness of it are alike designated as those of �the drawing out of water;� for, according to the same Rabbinical authorities, the Holy Spirit dwells in man only through joy. (Edersheim 1904:280.)Thus the Talmud says
One further point to take into account is that the reservoir at the lower end of the City of David was not even in existence until king Hezekiah had it made. That was almost 300 years after Solomon�s Temple was built. These are all important details that impact the determination of the actual location of these important geographical features. This will become even clearer as we proceed in reconstructing the whole area around the Gihon Spring from the information given in the Book of Nehemiah.
The Temple
and The
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The two diagrams above illustrate the imagery of the Temple with that of the Garden in Eden. The entrance to the Temple was from the East symbolic of entering the Land of Eden from the East. The region referred to as Eden in Genesis was the same territory known as "The Land" promised to Abraham and his descendants. |
The King�s Garden, which Nehemiah 3:15 says was by the Pool of Siloam, could well have been created by King David at the time he retrieved the ark of God from Kirjath-jearim and brought it amidst great rejoicing to Jerusalem, where he had pitched a tent for it. Based on I Kings 1:38-39 my sense is that he erected the tent for the ark on a terrace region directly above and within the immediate vicinity and view of the Gihon Spring. This short, but important passage of scripture tells of the crowning of Solomon as king in succession to his father; describing how Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet �went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon king David�s mule, and brought him to Gihon. And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon.�
Ernest Martin, in Chapter 15 of his book, The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot, says that the very first design of a �Temple� that God presented to mankind was the Garden of Eden which lay within the much larger region of the Land of Eden (Martin 2002:248). This, as the Jewish authorities themselves came to realize, was intended to represent to our first parents, Adam and Eve, a replica of God�s divine residence in heaven. King David, a man after God�s own heart as he is described in Acts 13:22, would have understood this and no doubt created a truly beautiful garden around the Tabernacle on that terraced region of the Ophel.
Part III of this series will appear in the July-September issue of Perspectives
F1The wall along this course was quite strong. Breaching this section of the wall would have cost more in resources than any advantage gained. The strategic key to defeating the city was taking the Temple and its precincts which is where the Babylonians placed their effort. On taking the city the Babylonians left the wall as its destruction would have taken more effort than it was worth. The burden simply significantly outweighed the benefits.
Page last edited: 12/18/05 05:11 AM
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