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 he most magnificent waterworks of ancient Jerusalem
is Hezekiah’s tunnel. Hezekiah was the king of Judah
from about 726-697 B.C. When Sennacherib succeeded
his father Sargon as the king of Assyria, Hezekiah
refused to continue paying tribute. He allied
against Assyrians and allied Judah with Egypt
mentioned in Isaiah 36:4-7:
“And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to
Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of
Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou
trustest? I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain
words) I have counsel and strength for war: now on
whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against
me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken
reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go
into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of
Egypt to all that trust in him. But if thou say to
me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not he,
whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath
taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye
shall worship before this altar?”
This resulted in an invasion of Judah by Sennacherib
recorded in II Kings 18:13-16
“Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did
Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the
fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah
king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish,
saying, I have offended; return from me: that which
thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of
Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three
hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of
gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was
found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures
of the king's house. At that time did Hezekiah cut
off the gold from the doors of the temple of the
LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of
Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of
Assyria. And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and
Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah
with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went
up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come
up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper
pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's
field.”
While in II Chronicles 32:2-4, it can be read thus,
“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?”.
This occurred about 701 B.C.
King Hezekiah needed a reliable water supply for
Jerusalem, but at the same time he wanted to prevent
the Assyrian forces from using the Gihon Spring,
which was located outside the city. The Bible
records Hezekiah’s solution in II Chronicles 32:30:
“This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper
watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down
to the west side of the city of David.”
The water from the Gihon was diverted into the Gai
wadi by means of a tunnel 1,740 feet or 530 meters
long. The tunnel was done simultaneously from both
ends until they met somewhere near the middle. It
was a rather amazing feat of engineering for the
time.
In 1880, an inscription was discovered by a boy who
was bathing in the Gihon spring. Carved in the rock
at the end of the tunnel, it described the meeting
of two groups of workers who had started from
opposite ends of the tunnel. Translated, it read
“The tunneling was completed… While the hewers
wielded the axe, each man toward his fellow… there
was heard a man’s voice calling to his fellow… the
hewers hacked each toward the other, axe against
axe, and the water flowed from the spring to the
pool, a distance of 1,200 cubits…“ The inscription
is now in the Istanbul Museum.
The testimony of the ancient tunnel is one more
proof of the Bible’s validity. It demonstrates that
the events and people of the Bible were real and
credible. Today, the pool still exists as it did in
Hezekiah’s reign upholding the Bible’s accuracy,
giving us detailed information which can be verified
even 2,700 years later.
The Hezekiah’s tunnel is a constant reminder that
proves how authentic the Bible is…
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