New discovery in the City of David changes what we knew about the Pool of Siloam

In the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus healed a blind man:

“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go,’ he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam’ (this word means ‘Sent’). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.” (John 9:6–7, NIV)

What we thought we knew

A year ago, we were surprised to hear that the place we thought was the Pool of Siloam for the past ten years is not exactly what we assumed, because excavations carried out there overturned previous understandings. We wrote about that discovery in a previous article.

Recently, further discoveries at the same site have once again turned everything upside-down.

The recent archaeological discovery

In the last 20 years, we went through several archaeological interpretations of the location and role of the Pool of Siloam which is mentioned in the Gospel of John.

First, the pool of Siloam was attributed to a small pond at the exit of Hezekiah’s Tunnel. About ten years ago, a new find with big Herodian stairs that seemed to be the edge of a monumental pool was suggested to be the Pool of Siloam. The archaeologists also suggested that the pool was used as a large ritual bath (mikveh) for the pilgrims coming to Jerusalem.

Last year, after that big pool was excavated, it became clear that first, it is not what the scholars expected to see, and second, the pool is too deep to be a mikveh.

The new discovery of an ancient dam that forms the eastern wall of the pool, changes everything once again.

The top of the eastern wall was known for many years and was attributed to the end of the Iron Age – the destruction of the First Temple. But further excavation and recent radiocarbon dating put that dam in about 800 BC, during the reign of King Joash or Amaziah – about 100 years before King Hezekiah.

The dam which was discovered is a wall 10 meters thick, 11 meters high, and stretches 19 meters north to south (and this is only what has been exposed). It is, therefore, a massive dam – unlike anything else in Israel from First Temple period.

Why Is this important?

Until now, we thought that the Pool of Siloam was first built by Hezekiah, when he redirected the Gihon Spring through the Siloam Tunnel and constructed a new pool to collect the spring water.

But now we know that a pool already existed at least a century before Hezekiah, and it is a massive pool much larger than we expected to find.

In order to fill that pool, a huge dam was built to collect floodwaters and rain flowing from the City of David and Jerusalem into a very deep reservoir, so the water would not be washed into the Dead Sea through the Kidron Valley.

The excavations are not yet complete, and many questions remain. But we can now say for certain that Hezekiah redirected the water of the Siloam Tunnel into a pool that was already there.

The excavators suggest now, that this deep pool served as a water reservoir both during the First Temple period (under the kings of Judah) and in the Herodian period (Second Temple).

Herod added wide steps where people could sit along the pool’s edge. However, it could not have been a mikveh, since it was far too deep.

This new discovery raises two key questions then:

1. Why did Hezekiah need to dig the Siloam Tunnel if there was already a conduit carrying water from the Gihon Spring to the pool at the bottom of the City of David?

2. Where is the Pool of Siloam that is mentioned in John 9?
   

Answering the first question: Hezekiah’s strategy

To answer the first, we turn to the Bible.

In 2 Chronicles 32:3–4,30, we read:

“He (Hezekiah) consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city, and they helped him. They gathered a large group of people who 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. He succeeded in everything he undertook” (NIV).

Hezekiah needed to hide the access to the Gihon Spring so the Assyrians could not reach it during the siege they put on Jerusalem. Therefore, he sealed the spring and dug a new underground channel – completely hidden – directing the water into a pool that, according to the new discovery, had already existed for at least a century.

The second question: Which pool was mentioned in John 9?

As for the Pool of Siloam in John 9, the answer is still uncertain.

In Nehemiah 3:15 we read:

“…He also repaired the wall of the Pool of Siloam, by the King’s Garden, as far as the steps going down from the City of David” (NIV).

Nehemiah came to Jerusalem and restored it in the early Second Temple period during the return to Zion. Between his time and the days of Jesus, several hundred years passed, during which Herod made significant building projects in Jerusalem.

The term “Pool of Siloam” is not mentioned anywhere outside of Nehemiah and the Gospel of John. We only read about the “Spring of Siloam” or simply “Siloam.” The Spring of Siloam is the place where the water comes out of the tunnel that Hezekiah built. Therefore, the blind man in John 9 either washed his eyes in the Spring of Siloam or in the large water reservoir close by.

We see how archaeological excavations always challenge our previous perceptions, and force us to rethink what we thought was known. And we can also see, that the more we excavate, the more the Bible narrative is being reinforced.