PART III The Steps to the Gihon

The one other important feature we now need to consider is the enormous set of stairs that descend from the city of David. Nehemiah says that Shallun, and obviously those of the particular party who were working with him and under his direction, repaired the wall of the pool of Siloam by the King�s Garden as far as this flight of stairs (Nehemiah 3:15).^F1 He does not speak of them as going down, or coming down, from the city, as though the staircase they here encountered was descending from some level above their present position and was continuing on down to some unspecified lower level. He specifically says they came to the stairs that go down, as though the descent of the staircase actually began at the point they had now reached, where their particular responsibility ended.

A great deal depends on how we are to understand Nehemiah�s words. To lightly gloss over them would be doing an injustice to the Hebrew Scriptures and probably ignoring a vital element of evidence embodied in this verse. If we consider the staircase as descending from above their present position, then we have to say that the city of David lay above them. If we admit to that, however, then we are effectively saying that the Pool of Siloam and the King�s Garden both lay outside of the city, because that, according to Nehemiah 3:15, was where they were then working at the time.

The fact that they were within the city is clearly shown by Jeremiah 52:7, which describes the flight of king Zedekiah and his men of war during the final siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. The verse reads:

Then the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled, and went forth out of the city [of David] by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king's garden; (now the Chaldeans were by the city round about:) and they went by the way of the plain. (Jeremiah 52:7.)

They went forth from the city of David, we are told, through a gate close by the king�s garden. This clearly shows that both the King�s Garden and the Pool of Siloam were just inside the city limits, naturally demarcated by the defensive wall that was being repaired.

By the same reasoning, the Fountain Gate, which gave access to the stairs that went down from the city of David, would have been the principal means by which the people left or entered the city at that important section of the wall. Its importance is well illustrated by two specific passages of scripture in Isaiah, the first of which relates to the time of king Ahaz, one of the most prominent kings of Judah, and the other to his son Hezekiah who succeeded him to the throne.

Highway of the Fuller's Field

In the case of Ahaz, we find God directing Isaiah, together with his son Shear-Jashub, to go and meet with Ahaz at a specific point in the highway of the fuller�s field. Notice where that was:

Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-Jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller�s field.� (Isaiah 7:3.)

Now the highway, to which reference is made here, ran from north to south along the east side of Jerusalem in the Kidron valley. It was commonly known as the highway of the fuller�s field because it was at that point, outside the east wall of the city, that the fullers would wash the garments given into their care for cleaning, as Black�s Bible Dictionary states:

Ample space was allotted to the fullers, outside the east wall in a fuller�s field at the conduit of the upper pool of the Gihon spring where they spread out garments to dry after washing them in copper tubs where feet trod out the grime which had been loosened by lye or soap. (Black 1960:208.)

The conduit itself received its water directly from the Gihon spring, and served as a means of channelling the water away from the spring in a steady and continuous flow. The spring itself was a pulsating water source that gushed intermittently as a result of the perpetual gradual filling and sudden emptying of a subterranean siphon.^F2 The volume of spring-water that emerged from the crevice in the rock each time the subterranean siphon emptied itself was such that the area within the tower where the spring was located would have filled up with water in a matter of seconds unless there had been an adequately deep channel to conduct it away. According to Wilkinson, in a paper he wrote for the Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 1974,entitled Ancient Jerusalem: Its Water Supply and Population, the minimum annual yield of the Gihon spring was 73,000 cubic metres (Wilkinson 1974: ). That is 200 cubic metres per day, which is a vast quantity of water by anyone�s standards.

The conduit that channelled the water away from the spring was certainly of sufficient depth to cope with the volume that gushed forth. It was more than 15 feet deep within the Spring Tower, and between 1.5 and 3 feet wide; so we are informed by Ronny Reich, director of excavations for the Israel Antiquities Authority�s Jerusalem 3000 project, in a paper he wrote on the Gihon water system (Reich and Shukron 1999; for a critical review of the work of Reich and Shukron at the Gihon see The Water System of Jerusalem and Its Implications for the Historicity of Joab's Conquest by Terrence J. Kleven). The upper part of the channel, he said, was slightly V-shaped, so that when the huge covering boulders, weighing up to two tons, were rolled over on to the channel, they stuck in the V and sealed it off. Below the boulders, there then remained a 6- to 12-foot deep channel through which the water from the spring could flow in security.

The tower fortifications that were uncovered during these excavations, as well as the city wall higher up on the slope, were all found to be part of a defensive plan for the city constructed sometime in the 18^th to 17^th century BCE. "The dating," Reich goes on to say, "is consistent with similar finds at Gezer, Tel Balata (Shechem), and Hebron (Tell Rumeida). At each of these sites, cyclopean structures with huge stones and rock-cut foundations have been excavated and dated to Middle Bronze II." "For all these reasons," he continued, "we feel secure in our dating" (Reich and Shukron 1999:32). Now, since the southern wall of the Spring Tower was actually built over the cover stones of the Siloam conduit, it was obvious that the water channel must have been constructed before the Spring Tower as part of the same water system complex.

The waters that flowed out from the upper pool of the Gihon through that deep and secure conduit were those spoken of in Isaiah 8:6 as �the waters of Shiloah that go softly�. This gently flowing current of the channel brook ran from the Gihon spring all the way down the eastern side of the City of David, where it debouched into frequent pools of water through a number of openings that would have been cut in the channel�s eastern side. It was the very slight fall between the Gihon and the southern end of the city that gave the stream its gently flowing nature; which is likely why Isaiah so graphically contrasted its waters with those of the great Assyrian river, the mighty Euphrates, in Isaiah 8:7.

Their smooth, peaceful flow was typical of the silent and unseen working of God, and of the prosperity that would naturally follow the confidence in Himself which He was constantly urging upon His People. Yet they refused to hear, and remained blind to the all-wise and all-powerful Creator who had chosen them to be His Own special nation, and instead sought alliance with the great world-power of Assyria which, like its own mighty river, would one day overflow into their land with waves of death and destruction.

Just 28 years after Isaiah had stood at the end of that conduit of the upper pool and delivered God�s message to Ahaz, we find Rabshakeh, an emissary of Sennacherib, standing in the very same spot and calling upon Hezekiah to deliver up both himself and the people of Jerusalem to his master, the king of Assyria.

And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller�s field. (Isaiah 36:2.)

These verses from Isaiah show just how important that area beside the Gihon Spring was from a diplomatic point of view. The reason, undoubtedly, was because the Fountain Gate at the head of the stairs that led down to the Kidron, was the principal means of access to and from the City of David. It led not only to the important and frequently-used highway which ran the length of the Kidron valley, but gave direct access to the Gihon spring.

It is important to notice that both of the above verses describe the water conduit as originating at the upper pool. That can only mean that the other end of the conduit must have emptied into a lower pool, one which would have served as a main water supply for the lower city. Often referred to simply as the Old Pool on maps of the city of David, it is now known as Birket el Hamra, and lies at the southern tip of the south-east ridge, although it is no longer used as a reservoir.

A great deal of important archaeological work has been carried out in the area of Jerusalem that was once occupied by the City of David, and particularly on the ancient complex water system that directed the water away from the Gihon spring as that most vital water source gushed forth its vast quantities of pure spring water each time the deep subterranean siphon suddenly emptied itself through the spring�s crevice. Gill in 1991 argued that the waterworks were fashioned along the pre-existing tracks of a natural karst system of shafts and conduits formed by dissolution of the limestones and dolomites upon which Jerusalem is built (Gill 1991:1467, Gill 1996:20). Reich and Shukron, however, challenge this theory arguing such a natural crevice could not have existed in the rock (Reich and Shukron 2002:75).

Upper Pool and the Two Walls

Of primary interest is the Upper Pool itself. The elevation sectional drawing below shows the pool as an integral part of the Gihon water system with a depth about 46 feet. Only a small part of this pool has so far been cleared in the present excavation work, but with its surface on a level with the start of the dolomite, its entire depth lies within that hard, impervious bedrock. The water is fed into it just a few feet above its deepest part via a subsidiary rock-cut tunnel, known as Tunnel III, which leads off the main Siloam Tunnel (Tunnel II) about 20 feet from Gihon. The actual surface of the pool therefore lies about 44 feet above the level of the spring itself.

That means that this Upper Pool could well be the Pool of Siloah by the King�s Garden, as Nehemiah described it in verse 15 of his third chapter, since it allows us to place the terrace where the pool was located just up the slope of the eastern embankment of the City of David from the Spring Tower over the Gihon spring. And that, as I have already shown, places it within the City of David, while the Gihon spring lay below it and therefore outside of the city as the scriptures describe.

Ronnie Reich, and his fellow archaeologist, Eli Shukron, made a further interesting discovery during their excavations around the upper level of this pool. Adjacent to it, and on the north side of the pool, they uncovered the foundations of another gigantic tower, with walls equally as thick as those of the Spring Tower over the Gihon spring. The southern rock-cut base of this tower, which has simply been called the Pool Tower, is vertical and is at the same time the northern side of the pool (Reich and Shukron 1999:30). Having now concluded that this pool could well be the Pool of Siloah, then this strong adjacent tower must obviously be considered as the Tower of Siloam, erected as a strong defensive fortification to protect this important body of water.

Further reference to this important pool of water may possibly be found in Isaiah 22:11 which speaks of the old pool. The chapter itself relates to a critical time for Judah, but particularly for Jerusalem as it found itself under siege by the Assyrian forces, primarily by the greatly dreaded bowmen of Elam and the fighting men of Kir. With belief in their own invincibility under God severely shaken, and the curtain or covering veil which had made Judah blind to the threatening danger now removed from their eyes, the Jews sought out every means to defend themselves, and to hastily repair the many breaches in the wall surrounding the city of David that had become so sorely evident.

One vital factor necessary for withstanding the expected siege was the safeguarding of their water supply. Isaiah 22:9 says that they "gathered together the waters of the lower pool,' which could well refer to the Old Pool at the southern extremity of the city that was fed by the brook of Siloah. The gathering together of the waters would thus have meant the sealing of all the outlets from that brook which debouched into pools down through the Kidron, and which irrigated whatever gardens there may have been outside the southern wall of the city.^F3 I certainly do not believe that lower pool to have been the one created by Hezekiah, as appears to be the accepted opinion of many today. The wording of the verse alone does not lend itself to that conclusion.

Coming now to verse 11, we are told:

Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool: but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago. (Isaiah 22:11.)

The reference we have here to the two walls, definitely puts this ancient pool in the immediate vicinity of the Gihon, as I will show a little later; and its expressed antiquity points to it as being the all-important upper pool, or Pool of Siloam, that was directly adjacent to and received its waters from the spring via the deep conduit known as Channel II and the shorter branch conduit that has come to be called Channel III.

The whole Gihon water system, with the exception of Hezekiah�s tunnel which was added at a much later period, dates back to the 18^th to 17^th centuries BCE, as I have already remarked. Now that happens to be an extremely interesting period in Old Testament history, because those were the days of Abraham and Isaac who lived a thousand years prior to the time of Isaiah. That is obviously why the prophet spoke of the one who fashioned the ancient pool as having done so �long ago�.^F4

In the first instance, Isaiah could have been reproaching the Jews for failing to see the hand of God in creating the deep cavernous area directly adjacent to the Gihon Spring which these Jews were now somehow desecrating. Exactly what it was they were doing is by no means clear. The King James says that they had made �a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool.� Other translations, including the Rotherham, speak of it as �a reservoir between the two walls,� while the Septuagint translates the passage as �ye procured to yourselves water between the two walls within the ancient pool.�

Although reference to the two walls is to be found only here in Isaiah 22:11, and in relation to Zedekiah�s escape from Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege of the city, there can be little doubt that they are the inner and the outer defensive walls spoken of in II Chronicles 32:5 in relation to the urgent defensive measures taken by Hezekiah, such as strengthening the Millo,^F5 when Jerusalem was threatened by the Assyrians. In his zealous attempt to strengthen and secure the city�s defences, we are told that he:

...built up all the wall that was broken down, and raised towers upon it, and outside it he built another wall; and he strengthened the Millo in the city of David. (II Chronicles 32:5 RSV.)

In no way could Hezekiah have built an outer wall all around the city at the time of the Assyrian threat; both time and opportunity would have been against him. It would no doubt have been limited to that part of the city most at risk and most vital to its inherent safety � to the area around the Fountain Gate, which was the main point of access to and from the city, and to the eastern side of the Temple above the Gihon. In fact, it is only to that specific area that reference to the two walls is actually made in the scriptural record.

The two walls in this area do present a problem where access to and from the King�s Garden is concerned, however. Such access was through the Fountain Gate, which was positioned in the primary defensive wall as the scriptures clearly indicate. The construction of the outer wall, therefore, could not have been such as to obstruct that access in any way. We are told that the stairs went down from that point in the wall, which formed the boundary of the city of David, and would obviously have proceeded unhindered to the Kidron Valley below. It is possible, of course, that the inner and outer walls were joined by two linking walls built either side of the Fountain Gate thereby forming a protective approach to the Gate equal to the distance that separated the inner and outer walls. This could possibly account for the covering that Nehemiah describes as being added to the Gate in verse 15.

Now I said, when commenting on Isaiah 22:11, that most versions of the Bible favour the word reservoir, or pool, rather than the word ditch as used in the King James Version. Isaiah, it seems, was voicing his disapproval or censure of a reservoir having been made between the two walls for the waters of the old pool. That artificial pool could well be the body of water referred to in Nehemiah 3:16 as the pool that was made; and if it was done by the direct command of Hezekiah, as the evidence certainly seems to indicate, then it could well be the King�s Pool that Nehemiah went to inspect on his midnight ride. There is no other body of water in that immediate area that is said to have been made, and to which the regal appellative could have been attributed.

Zedekiah's Escape Tunnel

The one other important passage of scripture in which the two walls are referred to relates to the escape from Jerusalem of king Zedekiah and his men of war in the eleventh and final year of the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, when the famine in the city had reached its terrible climax and the Babylonian forces had finally broken through the defensive wall. Notice what we are told in this account, as related in II Kings 25:2-6.

The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of king Zedekiah. By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the king�s garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah, but the Babylonian army pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, and he was captured. (II Kings 25:2-6 NIV; emphasis added.)

Notice, first of all, the important phrase that I�ve highlighted. That, together with what follows, reveals, just as surely as if God is spelling it out for us word for word, the only manner in which the king and his whole army could possibly have made their escape from the city that night. Here we have the whole city of David surrounded by the Babylonian forces, with every man keeping a watchful eye on every part of the wall to ensure that no one is able to escape. Their vigilance would have been particularly heightened at this time, because their forces had just managed to break through a section of the wall and gained entry to the city. This was the time when escapes would be the most daringly attempted.

And yet what do we find the king and the army doing? Zedekiah and all the men of war are said to have made their way to a particular unnamed gate that existed between the two walls in close proximity to the King�s Garden; and they did so with the clear intention of not only making their escape, but in the sure hope that they had every chance of doing so without being detected by the besieging forces. From what we are told in the latter part of the above quote, it is clear that they successfully achieved their objective and that their escape went unobserved because, by the time the Babylonians actually became aware of what had happened, they were already in full flight towards the Arabah.^F6

Being between the two walls � that is outside the primary defensive wall that adjoined to the Pool of Siloah as described in Nehemiah 3:15, and within the covering security provided by the outer wall � their movements would have remained undetected by the Babylonians. The only place to which such a gate could have given access was some subterranean stairway which would have taken them down to a deep underground escape tunnel which, in turn, would have allowed them to pass safely beneath the feet of the besieging Babylonian forces.

The manner of this escape could well have been symbolically enacted by the prophet Ezekiel roughly five years before it actually took place. In about the sixth year of Jehoiachin�s captivity in Babylon, Ezekiel, being likewise in exile there, was commanded by God to depict by means of a symbolical action, the type of departure that the king and others were to make from Jerusalem, and to explain the action to the perverse people around him. As explained in Ezekiel 12, he was to prepare baggage for exile during the day, and in the evening he was to make his escape through a hole he had broken through the wall. Furthermore, he was to cover his face so that he would not see the land. By doing this, he was to show himself to be a marvellous sign to Israel.

How accurately this typified the escape of Zedekiah and his men of war from Jerusalem is quite easy to see. In order to make their way into the area between the two walls, they could well have broken a hole in the inner wall quite close to the location of the gate and the stairs that would take them below ground to the subterranean escape passage. Furthermore, just as Ezekiel was commanded by God to cover his face so that he would not see the land, so the escapees were equally blind to the land above them as they made their way through the tunnel to its exit.

How exactly the Babylonians came to find out that Zedekiah and his men of war had been able to escape from the city is not stated. We are merely told that they pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. The fact that they are said to have pursued him could mean but one thing: that when they broke into the city and began searching for the king, they soon discovered the means of his escape and lost no time following after the king and his men of war through the tunnel. This would explain perfectly how they were then able to overtake him in the plains of Jericho. Zedekiah, we are told, was captured, but the men of war who escaped with him are said to have separated from him and scattered; so it is quite possible that many of them were able to avoid capture because the whole focus of the pursuit was aimed at catching the king.

Until the actual route of that subterranean passage can be properly determined and mapped out, the place within Jerusalem where it began can only be conjectured. But if that was a tunnel that Zedekiah used to escape from the city with his men of war, and everything points to it as being the only means by which he was able to reach the plains of Jericho before he was finally captured, then either its true starting point must be sought in the immediate area of the Gihon water system, or the route of the tunnel must have led to that area before continuing on under the Kidron to its termination.

__________

^F1 These stairs should not be confused with the massive stepped structure which served as the retaining wall for a massive building, probably the Citadel of Zion, at the north wall of the Jebusite city of Jebus.

^F2 The Gihon is a siphon-type karst spring. It is the only real or natural spring in or near Jerusalem making it the town�s main water source. Discharging large amounts of water intermittently, although the spring maintains a small constant flow, the Gihon lies in a natural cave found on the lower slope of city�s eastern hill. Karst refers to terrain made up of carbonate bedrock such as limestone, marble, or dolomite. In karst landscape groundwater moves by laminar flow through connecting cracks, fissures, and layers between rocks. (Germano 2003:41-42).

^F3 This may also have been part of a defense strategy for hiding the water supply from the enemy.

^F4 The sense is that they ignored its original purposes and altered the area as they pleased. The majority of commentators interpret the maker as God holding they looked to their physical preparations and not to God as the one who made Jerusalem. In other words they trusted more in these worldly means than in God (see Geneva Study Bible; Jamieson, Fausset, Brown; and Wesley's Explanatory Notes). The context, however, refers to the maker or constructor, which would have been the Canaanites who built and occupied the ancient city which was until captured by King David and his army as Jebus or Jerusalem. Jerusalem appears as a town called Urusalim in six of the el-Amarna letters (ca.1400-1367 BCE) in a form likely reading Rushalimum (Mazar 1993:698). The el-Amarna letters were diplomatic correspondence largely written by Canaanite rulers to the 18th Dynasty Egyptian courts of Amenhotep III (1408-1372) and Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten, 1372-1354). In the Sennacherib inscriptions (seventh century BCE) the town appears as Urusalim as well. The early Hebrew pronunciation was apparently Yerushalem, as evidenced by its spelling in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Septuagint. (Germano 2003:35).

^F5 A fragile 2.23-acre section of fill, known as the Millo, constructed by the Jebusites increased the settleable area of Jebusite Jerusalem (later, city of David) by roughly 26%, from 35 to 48 dunams [8.64 to 10.87 acres], and markedly improved their defenses in the area of the Gihon Spring. The very nature of the Millo�s design, however, required its continuous maintenance. Any undermining of its underlying retaining walls risked the collapse of the whole system. This made the Millo vulnerable to adverse weather, earthquake, and enemy action. (Germano 2003:35).

^F6 The Arabah Valley consists of the desert section of the Jordan rift lying between the Salt Sea (Dead Sea) and the Red Sea port of Ezion-geber.

Page last edited: 01/02/06 05:26 PM

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