As we prepared to head out of the
hotel to the City of David, Fr Jim, the Greek Orthodox priest with us, spotted
a fellow Cubs fan, a local tour guide named Mordechai. Here they are in
the lobby, proving yet again that the Cubs capture hearts everywhere!
The City of David is not the
current Old City of Jerusalem, but rather smaller area just below it, built by
David just before 1000 BC. Hundreds of years of life are here, including
extensive water management tunnels leading from the Gihon Spring. The area is
just west of the Mount of Olives, site of a massive Jewish cemetery. Jews chose
to be buried here because the whole Mount of Olives faces the Golden Door of
the Old City, through which Messiah is expected to return. Those in the tombs
here hope to be the first resurrected by the Messiah.
The picture shows
the above-ground coffins, and on the right the beginning of a mostly Arab
village just to the south.
Here’s a fuller view of this
village: Parts of it are now being excavated under people’s homes! In
Israel all home owners lease the land on which they sit, in 49 year increments,
which can be automatically renewed. But the land belongs to the State of
Israel, and it can excavate under your house – or relocate you with substantial
compensation: $2 million dollars - for archeological purposes.
We began our exploration on a
platform just south of the Old City. You can see us here with a Jerusalem Post
reporter who followed us.
We also had a Christian Science newspaper
reporter, a television crew, and of course, Karl Clauson from WYLL radio.
On of the most compelling parts of
this journey was that our Bibles were used as the key reference source to what
we were seeing. After decades of dismissal of its narrative as historical
fiction, it is now regarded as the best source of understanding what happened
in Israel and where to find it. We had our Bibles out in site after site,
and it proved a reliable guide to what we were seeing!
One example (among MANY), was the
quote in Jeremiah 37:3,
Zedekiah son of Josiah succeeded
Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim as the king of Judah. He was appointed by King
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. 2 But
neither King Zedekiah nor his attendants nor the people who were left in the
land listened to what the Lord said through Jeremiah. 3 Nevertheless, King Zedekiah sent Jehucal
son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah the priest, son of Maaseiah, to ask Jeremiah, “Please
pray to the Lord our God for us.” 4 Jeremiah
had not yet been imprisoned, so he could come and go among the people as he
pleased.
Many wondered if any of these
events and people ever happened or existed, and then in the City of David dig,
there it was, the seal of Jehucal, one of Zedekiah’s ministers. Other,
similar confirmations of the accuracy of the biblical account are found
regularly.
Layers of invasions and new
construction over many centuries have buried the original City of David quite
far down, but extensive excavation is turning up significant finds every year.
Here is one of those excavations far under ground.
There are also extensive tunnels
under the city, most used for water conservation and management, some for
entrance and escape. These go back thousands of years, and the engineering is
stunning. Hezekiah’s tunnel (see Isaiah 22:9), famed as a model of
engineering and tactical brilliance, was inaccessible to us because it was
flooded by all of the recent rains and snow.
Notable in Scripture is the Pool
of Siloam (also called Shiloah). This is mentioned in Isaiah 8:6, and in John
9:7, where Jesus heals a man blind from birth.
If you look at the photo,
you’ll see a big black pipe. Ignore that. To the right of the pipe are a group
of people walking down a stone staircase, and in front of them, just right of
the pipe, is a channel of water. To the right of the channel is a stone
platform about 10 feet wide, and to the right of that, a stone step down into a
pool (below all the bushes and hard to see). This pool was originally quite
large, perhaps 40 by 100 feet, though only 40 by 6 feet of it have been
excavated thus far. This is the pool of Siloam.
The surprise is if you turn and
walk up the staircase, it leads all the way up to the southern end of the
Temple Mount, and the main street of Jesus time.
UNDER the stairway is a complete
channel, as wide as the stairs (at least 6 feet), for carrying water runoff
from the Temple area. Think about how clever this is: the same route is a
stairway on top, with a water channel under the stairs! During the Jewish
rebellion of 66-70 AD, the few remaining survivors of the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans apparently hid out under this stairs, in this water
channel, but were eventually found, burned out, and killed.
If you look at the photo above of
the main street at the Temple, you’ll see an odd outcropping of stones from the
Western side of the Temple walls. This was the beginning of a great arch that
led away from the Temple interior to the West. This next photo shows the
left side of this same area.
The Temple wall is to the right, and on the left
is a series of openings in a long wall along the main street. These were booths
for vendors at the Temple Mount, and one or more of them were money-changers,
and probably right where Jesus drove them out (Matthew 21)!
The stairs leading up to the mount are of changing depths to prevent unseemly running to or from the Temple. This wall is quite massive and very long. The next photo shows the view from the top of the steps, off to the east along the wall.
Lastly, the southern side of the
Temple Mount, at the base of the steps, contains many ritual baths, or mikvahs, so worshippers could cleanse
themselves before entering the holy temple.
I’m pretty sure it is hard to
imagine all of this, and how each part is connected to the other to make one
enormous whole. As interesting as it might be to hear about it, or to see
photos, nothing compares to being there and experiencing it all first hand. It
is wonderful, and moving. The Bible really comes to life before your eyes!
Our last visit of the day was to
Yad Vashem, the memorial museum dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, the
war against the Jews by Hitler and his cronies. It is very moving and very
extensive, and it amazes me that some people today (like the president of Iran)
claim that no such Holocaust ever happened. Errrrgh.
Photos are not permitted in Yad
Vashem, so I’ve included none here. When you are there you don’t really want to
take photos anyway. It is very moving and leaves one with a heavy heart.
You have to come to Jerusalem and
see all this for yourself.
-Pastor George
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