pool of siloam Summary and Overview

POOL OF SILO'AM or SHILO'AH (sent), Arabs call it Bicket el-Hamra, or the "red pond." Warren supposes this to have been the pool dug by King Hezekiah. the "king's pool" of Nehemiah and the Siloam of Josephus. It was to the pool of Siloam that a Levite was sent with a golden pitcher on "the last day, that great day of the feast" of tabernacles. To this Jesus alluded when, standing in the temple, he cried, "If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink." John 7:37-39. To this pool the blind man was sent to wash, and returned seeing. John 9:7-11. Its waters now refresh the gardens below, making them the greenest spots about Jerusalem, and abounding in olives, figs, and pomegranates.
1. A pool near Jerusalem, referred to as "the waters of Shiloah that go softly," and as "the pool of Siloah by the king's garden." Isa 8:6; Neh 3:15. It is also called "the pool." John 9:7-11. These texts give us no clue to the location of the pool. Josephus mentions it as a fountain and says it was at the mouth of the Tyropoeon valley, and there is no doubt as to its identity with a pool now existing at the mouth of this valley, about 450 yards south of the Haram wall and 60 yards west of the southern point of Ophel at Jerusalem. There are really two pools, of which the smaller may be properly the pool of Siloam. It is 52 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 19 feet deep. A flight of steps leads to the bottom, and the pool has yet a good supply of water, generally somewhat salt to the taste, perhaps from the soil through which it percolates, and it is, moreover, polluted by the washerwomen and tanners by whom it is constantly used. The pool is partly hewn out of the rock, partly built with masonry, and columns extend along the side walls from top to bottom. The water is supplied from the Fountain of the Virgin, with which the pool is connected by a zigzag tunnel, cut in the solid rock, 1708 feet long. Robinson, Barclay, and Warren crawled through this passage, which is 16 feet high at the entrance, and only 16 inches at its narrowest part. In this tunnel a remarkable inscription was discovered in 1880. It is Hebrew, and narrates the completion of the tunnel. The inscription is reputed to belong to the age of Hezekiah or possibly of Solomon.

Shelach in Nehemiah 3:15, KJV "Siloah," "Shiloah" (Isaiah 8:16), Siloam (John 9:7; John 9:11). Now Silwan. Every other pool has lost its Bible designation. Siloam, a small suburban tank, alone retains it. It is a regularly built pool or tank (bereekah) near the fountain gate, the stairs that go down from the city of David (S. of the temple mountain), the wall above the house of David, the water gate, and the king's garden (compare Nehemiah 12:37 with Nehemiah 3:15). Josephus (B. J. 5:9, section 4; 4, section 1; 6, section 1; 12, section 2) places it at the end of the valley of Tyropeon, outside the city wall where the old wall took a bend eastward, and facing the hill on which was the rock Peristereon to the E. The adjoining village Kefr Silwan on the other side of Kedron also retains the name Siloam. Silwan stands at the southern extremity of the temple mountain, known as "the Ophel." It is partly hewn out of the rock, partly built with masonry, measuring 53 ft. long, 18 wide, 19 deep. A flight of steps descends to the bottom. Columns extend along the side walls from top to bottom. The water passes hence by a channel cut in the rock, and covered for a short way, into the gardens below which occupy the site of "the lower pool" or "the king's pool" (Nehemiah 2:14). The fountain of the Virgin above is connected by a zigzag conduit, 1,750 ft. long cut through the rock, with a reservoir, an oblong basin, decreasing. in size as it proceeds from 15 to three feet, in a cave entered by a small rock hewn archway. From this artificial cave at the west end of Siloam an open channel in the rock conveys the water into Siloam. The Virgin's fountain (where the lamp here figured was found), 15 ft. long by six wide at the bottom, is on the opposite side of the valley from the Jewish burying ground where Kedron turns W. It is near the beginning of the projection of the temple hill called "Ophel." It is named now also "the fountain of the mother of steps" ('Ayin 'um 'ed durag), because it is reached by two flights of 26 descending steps cut in the rock. It is a natural syphon, so that at times it is quite dry and in a short time rises beyond its ordinary limits. The term kolumbeethra in John 9:7 implies "a pond for swimming." R. Ishmael says of its source, the Virgin's fountain, that there the high priest used to plunge. It was to Siloam that a Levite was sent with the golden pitcher on "the last and great day of the feast" of tabernacles. From Siloam he brought the water to be poured over the sacrifice in memory of the water at Rephidim. To it Jesus alluded when standing in the temple He cried, "if any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink," etc. (John 7:37-39). He "sent" the blind man to wash the clay off his eyes in Siloam, which means "sent," and he returned seeing. Messiah "the sent One" (Luke 4:18; John 10:36) answers to the type Siloam the sent water (Job 5:10; Ezekiel 31:4) that healed; He flows gently, softly, and healing, like Siloam fertilising and beautifying, not turbid as the winter torrent Kedron, nor sweeping destructively all before it as Euphrates (symbol of Assyria), but gliding on in its silent mission of beneficence (Isaiah 8:6; Isaiah 42:1-4; Isaiah 40:11; 2 Corinthians 10:1). Siloam was called so from sending its waters to refresh the gardens below, still the greenest spot about Jerusalem, and abounding in olives, figs, and pomegranates. The water for the ashes of the red heifer also was taken from Siloam (Dach Talm. Babyl. 380). Into Siloam probably Hezekiah led by a subterranean aqueduct down the Tyropoeon valley the waters on the other side of the city when "he stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon and brought it straight down to the W. side of the city of David" (2 Chronicles 32:30).