pool Summary and Overview

a pond, or reservoir, for holding water (Heb. berekhah; modern Arabic, birket), an artificial cistern or tank. Mention is made of the pool of Gibeon (2 Sam. 2:13); the pool of Hebron (4:12); the upper pool at Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:17; 20:20); the pool of Samaria (1 Kings 22:38); the king's pool (Neh. 2:14); the pool of Siloah (Neh. 3:15; Eccles. 2:6); the fishpools of Heshbon (Cant. 7:4); the "lower pool," and the "old pool" (Isa. 22:9,11). The "pool of Bethesda" (John 5:2,4, 7) and the "pool of Siloam" (John 9:7, 11) are also mentioned. Isaiah (35:7) says, "The parched ground shall become a pool." This is rendered in the Revised Version "glowing sand," etc. (marg., "the mirage," etc.). The Arabs call the mirage "serab," plainly the same as the Hebrew word "sarab", here rendered "parched ground." "The mirage shall become a pool", i.e., the mock-lake of the burning desert shall become a real lake, "the pledge of refreshment and joy." The "pools" spoken of in Isa. 14:23 are the marshes caused by the ruin of the canals of the Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Babylon. The cisterns or pools of the Holy City are for the most part excavations beneath the surface. Such are the vast cisterns in the temple hill that have recently been discovered by the engineers of the Israel Exploration Fund. These underground caverns are about thirty-five in number, and are capable of storing about ten million gallons of water. They are connected with one another by passages and tunnels.

Pools, like the tanks of India, are in many parts of Israel and Syria the only resource for water during the dry season, and the failure of them involves drought and calamity. #Isa 42:15| Of the various pools mentioned in Scripture, perhaps the most celebrated are the pools of Solomon near Bethlehem called by the Arabs el-Burak, from which an aqueduct was carried which still supplies Jerusalem with wafer. #Ec 2:6| Ecclus. 24:30, 31.

berakah. Reservoir for water, whether supplied by springs or rain (Isaiah 42:15). The drying up of the pools involved drought and national distress. The three pools of Solomon near Bethlehem are famous, and still supply Jerusalem with water by an aqueduct (Ecclesiastes 2:6). Partly hewn in the rock, partly built with masonry; all lined with cement; formed on successive levels with conduits from the upper to the lower; with flights of steps from the top to the bottom of each: in the sides of Etham valley, with a dam across its opening, which forms the eastern side of the lowest pool. The upper pool is 380 ft. long, 236 broad at the E., 229 at the W., 25 deep, 160 above the middle pool. This middle pool is 423 long, 250 broad at the E., 160 at the W., 39 deep, 248 above the lower pool. The lower pool is 582 long, 207 broad at the E., 148 at the W., 50 deep. A spring above is the main source (Robinson, Res. 1:348, 474).