The Bible explains the preparations that King Hezekiah made when he understood that the Assyrian King, Sennacherib, was on his journey to besiege Jerusalem. In 2 Chron. 32:2-4 & 30, we see,
“When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to make war on Jerusalem, he consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city, and they helped him. A large force of men assembled, and they blocked all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land. “Why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?” they said….It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled the water down to the west side of the City of David.”
2 Kings 20:20 then sums up Hezekiah’s life in this manner, “When it comes to the other occasions of Hezekiah’s reign, all his accomplishments and how he made the swimming pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city, are they not composed in the book of the record of the kings of Judah?”
In 1838, Edwin Robinson through his archeological discovery found an ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem. Later on, in 1880, some youths who were checking out the aqueduct found an ancient Paleo-Hebrew engraving in the wall of the tunnel that Robinson had actually missed out on. Based upon the script it has actually been dated to the 8th century BC– the time of Hezekiah. The engraving records show how the guys digging the tunnel worked from 2 opposing directions– one from the north, the other from the south– and satisfied in the middle.
The engraving was written: “… this is the story of the tunnel … the axes protested each other and while 3 cubits were delegated (cut?) … the voice of a male … contacted us to his equivalent, (for) there was [a fracture?] in the rock, on the right … and on the day of the tunnel (being completed) the stonecutters struck each male towards his equivalent, ax versus ax and streamed water from the source to the swimming pool for 1,200 cubits.”
Even today, numerous researchers are baffled about how the groups effectively met in the middle. Their finest guess is that rock-sounding strategies were utilized. The tunnel has actually been dated utilizing numerous approaches, consisting of radiocarbon dating, to Hezekiah’s period, hence validating archeological evidences of the scriptural verses that specify that it was constructed by Hezekiah.
The Siloam engraving and the tunnel of Hezekiah both supply substantial proof of the historic occasions explained in the pages of Bible. If you go to Israel today, among the greatest tourist attractions for travelers thinking about scriptural history is Hezekiah’s tunnel. You can in fact travel through the knee-high water following the ancient aquaduct that was sculpted by King Hezekiah’s guys.
For further reading of Hezekiah’s tunnel, we suggest you explore; “Hezekiah’s Tunel” by Gabriel Levin.
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