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"This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it
straight down to the west side of the city of David."
A more extended reference to this act is found in II Chron. 32: 1-4, which
associates the work with the threatened siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib.
Wellhausen, the "Father of Higher Criticism", ridiculed the attempt to construe these
notices as authentic history, but the excavator's spade has dug the grave for his criticism.
Referring to this work of Hezekiah, we have several interesting items which can best be
described in the archaeologist's own words on the work which was done on the East side
of the city. W. F. Birch says:--
"Sir Charles Warren discovered one entrance to three staircases, a little north of the
well, one of them leading to a semi-natural cistern in the rock, where a natural cleft was
also visible . . . . . at the bottom of the wall a hole or duct was left six and three-eighths
by four inches, and on the northern side a stone plug to fit, and twelve inches long, was
found in it. Why? Here is THE VERY PLUG Hezekiah put in when Sennacherib
invaded Judah."
When the 1,800 feet long aqueduct from the cistern was brought down the Kidron, the
brook was stopped and buried forty or fifty feet out of sight, beyond the hearing or
discovery of the Assyrians. By a providential accident, an inscription in ancient Hebrew
was found in the wall of rock about nineteen feet from the place where the subterranean
conduit opens out of the Pool of Siloam. The inscription is as follows:--
Translation of the Siloam Inscription.
Line 1.--(Behold) the excavation. Now this is the history of the breaking through.
While the workmen were still lifting up
Line 2.--the pickaxe, each toward his neighbour, and while three cubits still remained to
(cut through, each heard) the voice of the other calling
Line 3.--to his neighbour, for there was an excess (or cleft) in the rock on the right . . . . .
And on the day of the
Line 4.--breaking through, the excavators struck, each to meet the other, pickaxe against
pickaxe; and there flowed
Line 5.--the waters from the spring to the pool over (a space of) one thousand and two
hundred cubits. And . . . . .
Line 6.--of a cubit was the height of the rock above the heads of the excavators.
Such was one of Hezekiah's works of which he might naturally have felt proud. Man
is a mixture. Even the N.T. saint is the possessor of two natures, and the record of
Hezekiah's is a warning to us all. II Chron. 32: 32 speaks of Hezekiah's "goodness",
and the same chapter speaks of his pride and his ingratitude (verses 25, 26). There is no
contradiction here: all who have experienced the grace of God will know how true this is
to life. The redeeming feature, the synthetizing element, which brings concord and
makes "pride of heart" and "goodness" possible in the same person is found in verse 26:
"Notwithstanding, Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart." In this he