Day 07 - Jerusalem: City of David, Hezekiah's Tunnel, Caiaphas' House

7, the number of perfection… and day 7 came close! Our first stop was THE CITY OF DAVID built on the ruin of the Jebusite civilization - 3,800 years ago - the Canaanites that King David defeated to gain possession of l Mount Moriah for Jerusalem. A column capitol was found with circular shapes, similar to those found in Lebanon, explained nicely by… 2 Samuel 5:11 - “Hiram king of Tyre (in Lebanon) sent… carpenters and masons who built David a house.” And excavation on the city of David and of David’s palace continue today. A seal with the name of Jeremiah’s scribe was recently found (Jer. 36:9-10), and might have found their ancient post office! As Dan - our Israeli guide - said, “The more we dig in the ground, the more the Bible turns out to be true.”

From the City of David and a cistern that lead to the Gihon spring, we came to HEZEKIAH’S TUNNEL and THE POOL OF SILOAM. We got to walk the 2,700 year old half-mile tunnel carved into the bedrock of Mount Moriah by king Hezekiah’s officers in order to redirect open the flow of the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam (John 9) so Sennacherib of Assyria could not block access to their fresh water source. It worked for Hezekiah and Jerusalem was spared captivity… at least from the Assyrians. See 2 Chronicles 32:2-4,30. Crazy cool and an engineering marvel, especially seeing as how two chiseling crews worked from opposite ends, and somehow met in the middle, preserving level water flow. It took us 20+ minutes to walk it and the water was mostly below our knee. And what archaeologists thought to be the pool of Siloam was laughable compared to you what has been unearthed recently. After a sewer blew up and digging to find the hole in the pipe, they discovered the upper layer of rock near the staircase of a much more massive Pool of Siloam. They have since found roads and staircases and are now, after a socio-politically heated 11-year supreme court delay, are busy looking for the rest of the pool!

Our last stop today was another recent find, HIGH PRIEST CAIAPHAS’ HOUSE with conjoining PRISON. Jesus would always cross through the garden Gethsemane on his way back to Mary, Martha and Lazarus’ house in Bethany after his time at the temple. But He would not make it back to Bethany on Thursday night of passion week. He would have likely been detained in one of the two dungeons after being tried illegally. Just outside would be the courtyard where Peter denied Christ three times and the narrow stone staircase on which we are as certain as we can be that Jesus walked, and on Friday morning toward his crucifixion. Just awesome.

Chad Bailey