A Tunnel from Israel’s Past Offers a Lesson for the Future

JERUSALEM — The status of Jerusalem is one of the most hotly contested issues in world diplomacy today. But the battle over Jerusalem goes back thousands of years. So CBN News decided to examine another time when Jerusalem was under siege, during the reign of King Hezekiah, and the lessons history offers for us today.

Just outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem lies the city of David, the birthplace of Jerusalem and the capital of Israel for more than 3,000 years. It is the place where kings and prophets once roamed, and the site of one of the marvels of the ancient world — King Hezekiah's tunnel.

CBN News took a walk down to the tunnel. Down several hundred feet, back several thousand years and into the pages of scripture.

"It was really an extraordinary time in the history of the Middle East," explained Claire Pfann, a professor of biblical studies at Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land. She describes the story of King Hezekiah as a story of the Jews under siege and threatened with a deadly water shortage.

"The first mega-empire Assyria had spread all the way from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and conquered all the peoples of those lands. There was a single enclave that had not been defeated, that of Judea," Pfann said. "The prophet Isaiah counseled him and said if he would stay true to God, God would preserve the kingdom of Judea, the city of Jerusalem. And so Hezekiah was thrust into action."

Before the tunnel was built, Hezekiah faced a crisis. The Assyrians had captured the ten northern tribes of Israel, many cities in Judah and were marching toward Jerusalem. So Hezekiah ordered the tunnel to be built to channel the city's only source of water, the Gihon Spring, inside the city walls.

"This water fed fresh water for the whole city. However, the entrance to this spring lay outside the city walls, and that was a double whammy. That meant the Assyrians who besieged the city would have access to fresh water and likewise they would be able to cut off the water supply for the Judeans," Pfann said. "What was Hezekiah to do? He consulted his engineers and they devised an extraordinary plan, to create an underground tunnel that would connect the source of the spring to the pool of Siloam to the outflow at the bottom of the hill. Now this was one of the two great engineering feats of waterworks in the pre-historic period, in the ancient times."

The Gihon Spring, still running today after more than 3,000 years, was the life source for Jerusalem. The tunnel became a civil defense project of immense proportions. Jerusalem was at stake and so was the future of Israel.

The tunnel varies in height. Sometimes it gets so low that you can hardly stand up. You can also see water dripping down from the sides of the tunnel and you can see the mark of the pick axes the tunnelers used when they cut through solid bedrock.

"We can assume that they worked 24 hours a day, six days a week because they probably took Shabbat off, in order to finish this before the troops of Sennacherib actually arrived outside the city of Judea… What did they use to light their way? Did they have lanterns? Did they have candles? What type of lighting they used we can only imagine," Pfann said.

With the Assyrians marching toward Jerusalem, Hezekiah was desperate. So he ordered the tunnel to be built from two directions from the north and the south. The story of how they met is told in these rocks. When they got close enough to each other, they made adjustments so they would meet up. The story of how the two tunnels met without the use of modern instruments, even a magnetic compass, some call an engineering marvel, or a miracle.

"When they broke through that rock, the water flowed completely from the north to the south and Jerusalem was insured a supply of fresh, pure water, spring water throughout the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians," Pfann said.

The tunnelers recorded their dramatic meeting on a famous tablet called the Siloam Plaque. But while they documented their ancient drama, some have suggested a theory that the tunnel is not really as old as the biblical account.

Professor Amos Frumkin of Hebrew University disagrees. He is an expert on caves, and has studied the materials from Hezekiah's tunnel. He examined both the stalactites on the ceiling of the tunnel and the plaster used to seal the floor.

"Within this plaster we found pieces of organic material which was also very fortunate. It was quite rare to find such materials and we dated it by radio-carbon and this gives a very good approximate date of the tunnel," Frumkin said.

Frumkin's research refutes a theory that the tunnel is much younger than the biblical account. His documentation puts the age of the tunnel about 2,700 years old, which is just about the time of King Hezekiah

The Assyrians never did capture Jerusalem, one of the few cities spared their onslaught. They fled after the Bible says God slew 185,000 Assyrians.

Walking through the tunnel, more than 100 feet below ground, can be a powerful experience. One visitor says he feels the power and drama of Jerusalem more there than in any other spot in the city. The chisel marks, still fresh today, bear silent witness to a remarkable biblical time when Jerusalem was saved from the mightiest war-machine of its day.

"The combination of the prophetic counsel of Isaiah to not surrender, the leadership of Hezekiah to fortify the city and provide fresh water, and the divine, sovereign activity in slaying the hosts of the Assyrian army outside the walls of Jerusalem enabled the survival of this nation," Pfann said.

It takes about an hour to walk the length of King Hezekiah's tunnel, but the travel through time can teach some critical lessons.

Pfann said, "Size is not the most important factor, neither military might, but having the direction of God is the important basis for which we can plan our lives and our strategies."