We Are the Tunnel Diggers
A brief history of Jerusalem and its water. A challenge to us today.
Water is essential and has always been so. God used it to bring forth the animals. (Gen. 1:20–21.) A river flowed out of Eden. (Gen. 2:10.) It was the instrument of God’s judgment on the earth. (Gen. 6.) And on and on. Even today, access to clean, salt-free water is essential to human, animal, and plant life, and has a profound impact on the prosperity and security (or lack thereof) of nations and people groups.
By studying one source of water in the Bible — the one that provided for the people of Jerusalem — and the role it played in history, we can strengthen our faith in the Bible and make spiritual application to our lives today. We can trust the Bible to the smallest detail, and in the smallest historical detail in the Bible we can find spiritual truth.
Jerusalem Before Hezekiah
The first time Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible is Genesis 14 when Abraham meets Melchizedek. Melchizedek is called the “King of Salem.” Psalm 76:2 equates “Salem” with “Zion,” which is Jerusalem (see, e.g., 1 Kings 8:1).
The first time the place is mentioned under the full name Jerusalem is Joshua chapter 10. There, it is under the control of the Amorites. Five Amorite kings, including the king of Jerusalem, attacked Gibeon for making peace with Joshua and the Israelites. Joshua came to Gibeon’s aid and on the day the sun stood still the Israelites prevailed.
Jerusalem was on the border of the lands given to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. (Compare Joshua 15:1, 8 with Joshua 18:11, 16.) However, neither Judah nor Benjamin drove out the people who lived in Jerusalem, the Jebusites (Joshua 15:63; Judges 1:21.) This was in 1374 BC.
Jerusalem is not mentioned again until the time of David. 350 years after Judah and Benjamin failed to drive out the Jebusites from Jerusalem, David had his battle with Goliath, as recorded in 1 Samuel 17. Where does David take Goliath’s severed head? — Jerusalem (1 Samual 17:54.) The Bible does not record why David took Goliath’s head there. It could have been the nearest significant city. It could have been a warning to its pagan inhabitants, which would fit with one of David’s most significant acts as king.
After Saul’s death, David was made king, but initially only by the tribe of Judah. (2 Samuel 2.) He reigned in Hebron during this time. After a state of civil war, David proved victorious and the rest of Israel made him king. (2 Samuel 5.) The first thing David did after this was go to Jerusalem to fight against the Jebusites. (2 Sam. 5:6–7.) The Jebusites taunted him. They believed their city was so defensible that even “the blind and the lame” would have to be removed from the city for him to defeat it.
To understand how David captured Jerusalem, then, we must understand Jerusalem’s water supply.
The Water Source: the Gihon Spring
What was it about the place that became known as Jerusalem that caused people to build a city there? It had one desirable element and one essential element.
The desirable element was its defensibility. Jerusalem was established on a mountain surrounded by valleys. The valleys closest to the city — on the east, south, and west sides — were deep and steep ravines. Thus, the area contained natural defenses, made even more so by the construction of walls.
The essential element, of course, was water. On the eastern slope of the mountain on which Jerusalem was built is a natural spring that came to be called the Gihon Spring.
To access the water from the spring, Jerusalem’s inhabitants built a tunnel they could walk that led to a 45' vertical shaft, which may have served as a well, though a newly excavated passageway may have provided another route to the water. The whole system is now known as Warren’s Shaft, after the British engineer who discovered it in 1867.
So if David’s army was going to have difficulty fighting the Jebusites going uphill against a walled city, they instead found their way in through the water system. “And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David’s soul, he shall be chief and captain.” (2 Sam. 5:8.) The man who took the challenge was Joab. (1 Chron. 11:6.) To get in the city, Joab and David’s army went “up the gutter.” In other words, they shimmied up the shaft. A member of Warren’s excavation team showed it was possible. So David conquered Jerusalem and called it the “city of David.” (2 Sam. 5:9).
A few years later, David brought the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. (2 Sam. 6:12.) Then, at the end of his reign, it is at the Gihon Spring that David had Solomon anointed his replacement as king. (1 Kings 1:32–40.)
The Building of Hezekiah’s Tunnel
Three hundred years later, Jerusalem encountered its greatest threat since David made it his capital.
When Assyria fully conquered the northern kingdom in 722 BC, and later threatened the southern kingdom, King Hezekiah faced a problem. If Assyria’s powerful army were to lay siege to Jerusalem, which it did in 701 BC under King Sennacherib, the Gihon Spring was outside the walls of the city. Though it was guarded, the area could be taken, and further there was water that flowed out of the spring into the valley. The spring would thus supply water to the enemy and could be denied to Jerusalem’s inhabitants.
The Bible references Hezekiah’s solution, twice, though only briefly. 2 Kings 20:20 says: “And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?”
Similarly, 2 Chronicles 32:30, after the previous passages stated Hezekiah’s greatness in generalities, states: “This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.” There is more detail earlier in the chapter, in verses 2–4:
And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him. So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?
In these brief passages, we see references to two other places with great significance. The “pool” Hezekiah created is the pool of Siloam. It is the pool of Siloam to which Jesus sends the blind man to be healed in John 9. And “the brook that ran through the midst of the land” is the “brook Kidron,” which runs through the Kidron Valley between Mount Moriah and the Mount of Olives. This was outside the walls and thus would have been a source of water to the besieging Assyrian army. It is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. The first is when David flees Jerusalem during Absalom’s rebellion, as David is said to pass over the brook Kidron. (2 Sam. 15:23.)
The Discovery of Hezekiah’s Tunnel
The tunnel and pool were eventually lost to observable knowledge until American explorer Edward Robinson discovered the tunnel in 1838.
We know something of how the tunnel was made by an inscription found by a young man in 1880.
The inscription — known as the Siloam Inscription — reads translated into English:
… the tunnel … and this is the story of the tunnel while … the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? … the voice of a man … called to his counterpart, (for) there was ZADA (??) in the rock, on the right … and on the day of the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100? cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters …
The inscription was removed in 1891. The Ottoman Empire controlled Jerusalem at the time, so it is not surprising that the inscription now resides in a museum in Istanbul.
Walking Hezekiah’s Tunnel Today
The tunnel continues to exist today and continues to carry water from the Gihon Spring. In fact, you can walk it.
It is 1,750 feet long. It takes 45 minutes or so to walk. It is 5' high in some places and is usually about 3' wide.
I walked it when I was in Israel in May 1999. It is not for the claustrophobic. The opening is small and dark. Because of the twists and turns, flashlights don’t provide visibility beyond several feet. Additionally, cold water flows from your ankles up to — at times — your knees.
Still, being inside it, with the knowledge that you are walking a water conduit built more than 2,700 years ago under the most important city the world has ever known, is an incredible sensation.
The mistaken pool of Siloam
Five years after I was there in 1999, it was discovered that what everyone thought the pool of Siloam was not, in fact, the pool. The end point after walking the tunnel from the Gihon Spring had been a small, narrow “pool.” It was this that everyone thought was the end point — the pool of Siloam.
The real pool of Siloam
In 2004, Jerusalem was installing a new sewer system. In the process of digging for it, steps leading to a larger pool were discovered not far away. This pool actually looked like a pool. It was 50' in length and there were actually steps leading into it from all sides.
It turned out, the prior “pool” was merely a channel to continue the flow of water into what was the pool of Siloam.
The Picture of a Spiritual Source of Water by the Physical Source
Hezekiah’s Tunnel can teach us more than that the Bible is historically true, as important as that is. We can see its imagery as reinforcement of spiritual truth.
Water is necessary for life. The water that Jesus gives brings eternal life, for Jesus said, “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:14.)
In the New Jerusalem there will be “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (Rev. 22:1.)
As Hezekiah denied the enemy the source of water at the Gihon Springs, so there is no “water springing up into everlasting life” to those who refuse the protection of the walls of Jerusalem only granted by believing on the Son of God, His payment of our sin debt on by his death on the cross, and His resurrection.
As the inhabitants of Jerusalem said to Hezekiah, “give us this water,” so let us say to Jesus, “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not” (John 4:15), for Jesus says to us, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37).
Let us not live as thirsty people, as if the course of water had not been diverted to us. We have water. We have life. We have the “words of eternal life” (John 6:68) by the “Word of life” (1 John 1:1).
Seek Jesus now, first for the salvation for your soul, and then for strength, peace, joy, and comfort, and all of His other promises. He is the Who can, Who has, Who will forever supply water for your thirsty soul, for “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103.) He says, “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” (Rev. 21:6.) So, “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” (Psalm 34:8.)
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely (Rev. 22:17.)
We are the tunnel diggers, bringing water to the people who are thirsty. Jesus is the water source. It is Jesus that we exalt. It is His Word we preach.
An adaptation of a message I preached at Twin Pines Baptist Church on March 30, 2014
