Day 08 - Jerusalem : City of David, Hezekiah's Tunnel, Southern Steps, Davidson Center, Model of Jerusalem, Shrine of the Book

Our guide, Dan, said today that if the history doesn’t match what the Bible says, then we just need to keep digging. Our understanding may be wrong, but the Bible is not. This was evident at several key places today.

At the City of David, we sat (in the rain) just outside a huge sloping stone wall, and learned that scholars had once believed that was the outermost wall to the city… but after discovering markings that named a specific government official (named in Jeremiah 36) in a house there, they decided to keep digging. Eventually they found the true outer wall, and learned that the inner wall was the wall to David’s palace. What was once seen as a discrepancy ultimately served to corroborate the biblical text.

Our next adventure was to descend many steps to a tunnel believed to have been carved during Hezekiah’s reign to bring water from a spring outside Jerusalem’s wall into the city in preparation to be able to withstand an impending Assyrian attack. We learned that additional excavations presented other alternatives for how they would have maintained their water source and withstood the Assyrians. In either scenario, we were reminded that Hezekiah was relying on God to “fight our battles” (2 Chr 32).

We walked about half a mile in ankle deep water through this underground tunnel—at least it wasn’t raining in the tunnel—and came out near the Pool of Siloam. This has only been excavated within the past couple of months, providing additional insight into the form and construction of the pool. This was the place where Jesus instructed the blind man to wash after placing mud on his eyes, and the same place that many Jews would have washed before ascending to the Temple.

We spent some time at the Southern Steps to the Temple Mount, where several gates would have allowed pilgrims to enter the temple plaza to offer sacrifices. We learned that the steps were intentionally constructed, varying heights and depths, in order to cause people to slow down and to bow their heads in humility, and prepare themselves for worship and sacrifice. Though it was still raining, several of us walked up and down these steps.

From there we traveled to the Israel Museum where we got to see a large model of Jerusalem at the time of Herod. This was very helpful to many of us, to see the city all put together as it would have likely been at that time. We also got to see a number of artifacts from places we had been visiting in the Shrine of the Book (where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept) and in the museum itself. Many of the things we have learned about over the past week really came together, and we came away with a greater sense of how God’s Word and the historical archaeology work together.