They now made a circuit round the city, from the Horse-gate, which lies northward from the Water-gate, till they came to the Water-gate again. The whole circuit might be as much as [five sabbath-days’ journies]. Their object in making it was rather to give Helon a general view of the different quarters of the city, and divert his thoughts by variety of scene, than to examine any part minutely, which indeed would now have been impracticable, the whole ground being covered with tents.
[Jerusalem]forms something of an irregular oblong. In the middle of the eastern side, which was one of the longest, rose the temple on mount Moriah. Around the temple lay the city, divided into three parts, built on three hills. Directly behind the temple, in the middle, and due west from it, was the Lower City, on the hill Acra. On the other side south-west from the temple, the Upper City crowned the hill of Zion; north-west lay the New City, on the hill Bezetha; and a small hill, Ophel, lay southward from the temple. Thus it might be said that the city, though of an oblong shape, lay in a crescent round about the temple.
Jerusalem stood on a very elevated range of hills; the last eighteen sabbath-days’ journies in approaching it were almost a continued ascent. Only towards the north, joining the [New City], there was some level ground, on the other three sides it was surrounded with vallies. On the eastern side, where the temple stood, was the valley, which, from the winter torrent which flowed through it, was called the valley of Kedron. The Upper City was skirted on the south side by the valley Ben-hinnom, where, under some of the last of the kings, children had been burnt to Moloch, at a place called Tophet. On the western side, the valley of Gihon bordered the Upper City, the Lower City, and the New City.
Two walls surrounded Jerusalem: one enclosed the Upper City and with it the southern part of the temple; the other began from this, and fortified the Lower City, joining the castle of Baris, which lay above, to the north, near the temple. The New City had at this time no wall. On the first wall were sixty towers, on the second fourteen, each twenty cubits high.
The city had [twelve gates], the number which Ezekiel had prophesied on the banks of Chebar. But in regard to the position and names of the gates, the instructions of Jehovah by his prophet had been as little attended to as those which he had given in the same passage for the form of the city (which was to have been a regular square) or for the division of the country.[[109]] Every side was to have had three gates, and each gate the name of one of the twelve tribes, but in rebuilding the city they adopted the names and sites of those which the Chaldeans had destroyed.
In the middle of the eastern side was the Sheep-gate, which led from the valley of Kedron to the temple. At the building of the walls under Nehemiah,[[110]] the superintendence of it was on this account given to the priests, and when it was ended, they consecrated it with thank-offerings and prayer. Higher up towards the north, but on the same side, was the Fish-gate, leading from the valley of Kedron into the New City, and not far from it the Old-gate, leading from and to the same places. It had its name from the circumstance of its not being destroyed, when the others were razed by the Chaldeans.
On the north side was the gate of Ephraim, and quite towards the west, the Corner-gate, both leading into the New City. On the west side the Valley-gate led from the valley of Gihon and Siloam, into the Lower City, and the Dung-gate and the Well-gate into the Upper City.
On the eastern side you entered from the vale of Kedron, by the Water-gate, close to which was the open square, on which Iddo’s house stood; and further up, by the Horse-gate and the Eastern-gate, into the Upper City. Lastly, the gate Miphkad, or the gate of Judgment, so called from justice having been long administered there, gave entrance into the precincts of the temple. It was near the Sheep-gate from which our survey began. In the space now described about 120,000 inhabitants commonly dwelt, but at the time of the Passover not fewer than a million have been assembled here.
The arrangement of the city bore some [analogy] to that of the camp in the wilderness. There the tabernacle was placed in the middle, and called the camp of the Majesty of Jehovah; around it were encamped the 22,000 priests and Levites, and round them, in a still wider circle, was the encampment of the twelve tribes, called the camp of Israel. So here at Jerusalem, the temple was called the camp of the Majesty of Jehovah, the exterior courts, the camp of the Levites, and the city, the camp of Israel. Thus the stranger, when he came from foreign parts, to celebrate the festival of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, found here the names and divisions which had been in use among his ancestors in the desert, and the whole city became as it were a permanent encampment, a standing memorial of that wonderful event, which is incomprehensible to those who consider Israel as only under human guidance. By remarks of this kind Elisama endeavoured to divert Helon’s thoughts from himself, to what concerned his nation. The names of the different parts and public buildings of Jerusalem had recalled many historical events to his mind; its glory under David and Solomon; its forlorn and ruined state when Jeremiah poured forth his lamentations over its smoking ashes, its new splendour when, under Nehemiah, it arose from its ruins.
On the day of preparation it was customary in Jerusalem to take an early meal, in order to have time for the arrangements necessary before the evening. The time of this meal, however, had been long past, when they returned to the house; the unleavened bread had been already baked and lay on the tables in the women’s saloon, and the cakes designed for the festival had been taken from the oven in the adjacent room. That which was the portion of the priest, was of greater size than the rest; it was baked the first, and lay on a separate table, adorned with flowers. The father of the family was to carry it to the temple in the afternoon. “The first and best of every thing,” said he, “belongs to Jehovah; in honouring his servants we think we honour him, and we set apart the first portion for the priest who lives by the law.”