Hezekiah’s Tunnel Re-Opens

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A tunnel 1750 feet long constructed by King Hezekiah to protect the water supply of Jerusalem from the Assyrians during Sennacherib’s siege of 701 B.C. has recently re-opened.

The remarkable tunnel which winds its way under the City of David in a large S-shaped curve was closed more than a year ago when a group of almost 100 school children were trapped in the tunnel by rising waters. Terror struck the children when they feared they would be drowned. The authorities promptly closed the tunnel to tourists.

The tunnel outlet has now been thoroughly cleaned and the water level reduced by more than two feet.

The tunnel begins at the Spring Gihon (ancient Jerusalem’s water supply) and extends to the Pool of Siloam, carrying water from the spring to the pool by a gradual, even slope downward. While a small flow issues from the spring continuously, the spring also gushes forth larger amounts of water intermittently as a result of a peculiar natural underground siphon system consisting of interior caverns. The amount of these heavy gushes depends on the 010amount of rainfall and the season of the year. The gushes last from 30 to 40 minutes and then the water recedes from four to ten hours.

This mysterious gushing apparently accounts for the name of the spring; in Hebrew, Gihon means “gushing”. Etymologically, the word suggests something bursting forth suddenly and mysteriously. Sometimes the gushing begins with a loud, echoing noise. It may well be that the spring was considered a holy place in ancient times because of these peculiar qualities. In any event, Zadok the priest annointed Solomon king at the Spring Gihon (see 1 Kings 1:38–40).

More than 250 years later, Hezekiah, king of Judah, was preparing to defend against an Assyrian siege by Sennacherib who had already terrorized the land. The Spring Gihon lay outside the city walls, near the bottom of the Kidron Valley. To protect Jerusalem’s vital water supply, Hezekiah dug his famous tunnel which is described both in Kings and in Chronicles:

“When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib 012intended to attack Jerusalem, he planned with his civil and military officers to stop up the water of the springs outside the city; and they helped him. They gathered together a large number of people and stopped up all the springs and the stream which flowed through the land. ‘Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water?’ they asked … Hezekiah closed the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them to the west side of the city of David.” (2 Chronicles 32:2–4).

In 2 Kings 20:20, we are told that if we wish to know how Hezekiah made his famous “conduit and brought water into the city,” the facts “are recorded in the Book of Chronicles of the Kings of Judah”, a book which unfortunately has not survived.

Hezekiah’s tunnel was discovered in modern times by the American orientalist Edward Robinson whose travels mark the beginning of modern archaeology in Palestine. Robinson and a friend crept through the tunnel in 1838. With the silt of centuries under them, they began crawling on all fours as best they could. “Yet in several places”, Robinson reports, “We could only get forward by lying at full length and dragging ourselves along on our elbows.” Fortunately, the Spring Gihon did not gush during their passage.

In 1867 Captain Charles Warren of Great Britain’s famous Palestine Exploration Fund made his way through the tunnel. However, he was not so fortunate; while he was in it, the Spring Gihon unexpectedly gushed:

“We were now crawling on all fours, and thought we were getting on very pleasantly, the water being only 4 inches deep, and we were not wet higher than our hips. Presently bits of cabbage-stalks came floating by, and we suddenly awoke to the fact that the waters were rising. The Virgin’s Fount (the Spring Gihon) is used as a sort of scullery to the Silwan Village, the refuse thrown there being carried off down the passage each time the water rises. The rising of the waters had not been anticipated, as they had risen only two hours previous to our entrance. At 850 feet the height of the channel was reduced to 1 foot 10 inches, and here our troubles began. The water was running with great violence, 1 foot in height, and we, crawling full length, were up to our necks in it.

“I was particularly embarrassed: one hand necessarily wet and dirty, the other holding a pencil, compass, and field-book; the candle for the most part in my mouth. Another 50 feet brought us to a place where we had regularly to run the gauntlet of the waters. The passage being only 1 foot 4 inches high, we had just 4 inches breathing space, and had some difficulty in twisting our necks around properly.”

In 1910 the tunnel was thoroughly cleaned by the so-called Parker Mission, a team of non-archaeologists who made a futile search of the passage in hopes of finding a hoard of Temple treasures supposedly hidden there just before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

The Pool of Siloam with whose waters Jesus cured a blind man (John 9:1–12) and into which the tunnel water flows has been periodically cleaned since 1910, but the Israeli authorities apparently forgot about the necessity for doing so. Since the school children were trapped in the tunnel over a year ago, tons of mud have been removed from the pool thereby reducing the level of the water in the tunnel by over two feet.

The flow in the tunnel will now be only about a foot high instead of waist- and sometimes chest-high as it had previously been. An electronic alarm system has also been installed to warn of dangerously rising waters.

(For further details on Hezekiah’s Tunnel, see H. Shanks, The City of David, (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1975)).

A tunnel 1750 feet long constructed by King Hezekiah to protect the water supply of Jerusalem from the Assyrians during Sennacherib’s siege of 701 B.C. has recently re-opened.