tower of siloam Summary and Overview

TOWER OF SILOAM which killed eighteen men in its fall. Luke 13:4. There is nothing in the text to determine the spot where the tower stood. The name is preserved in a wretched little village among the tombs on the east side of the Kedron, and now called Kefr Silwan. The village is at the foot of the third height of Olivet, near the spot where Solomon built the temples to Chemosh, Ashtoreth, and Milcolm, known as "the Mount of Corruption." The Tower of Siloam was supposed to have been a high structure erected near the fountain or pool of Siloam. Luke 13:4. Christ's reference to its destructive fall shows how far he rose above the current superstition which considered individual misfortunes as individual punishments.

Luke 13:4. Probably connected with "the wall of the pool of Siloah by the king's garden" (Nehemiah 3:15); "at the wall's bend to the S. above the fountain of Siloam" (Josephus B. J. 5:4, section 2) was probably a tower. Jotham "built much on the wall of Ophel" (2 Chronicles 27:3); "Manasseh compassed about Ophel" (2 Chronicles 33:14); a "tower lay (projecting) out" in Ophel (Nehemiah 3:26); such a projection might easily fall.