“David took the strong hold of Zion.... And David dwelt in the strong hold, and called it the City of David. And David built round about from Millo inward” (2 Sam. V. 7–9).
“So he took the Lower City by force, but the Citadel[20] held out still.... When David had cast the Jebusites out of the Citadel, he also rebuilt Jerusalem, and named it the City of David”—Josephus, Antiquities, vii. 3, 1–2 (Whiston’s Translation).
Here we should like to know at least which part of Jerusalem was called the City of David; because David built a house there, and most of the kings of Judah were buried there.
Again, in 1 Kings i., “Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fatlings by the Stone of Zoheleth, which is beside En-Rogel,” and sought to get himself proclaimed king. But when Nathan the prophet, and Bathsheba the mother of Solomon, had acquainted David with the proceeding, David gave orders to place Solomon upon the king’s mule, and “bring him down to Gihon,” and proclaim him as king. There the trumpet was blown, the people piped with pipes, and Adonijah and his guests heard the noise. Before we can fully realise these scenes we must know all the localities, and how they stood related to one another, and to the position of David’s house.
The Old Testament history is full of such local references, and so are the Books of the Maccabees; and perhaps most of all, the chapters of Josephus which describe the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. Let us then try and make ourselves acquainted with the features of the ground, and learn to apply the names to the proper localities.
1. The City as it is.
Its position.—Jerusalem is well described in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible. It lies near the summit of the broad mountain ridge, or high, uneven table-land which extends from the Plain of Esdraelon to the desert of the south. This tract is everywhere not less than from 20 to 25 miles in breadth, and has a surface rocky and uneven. Its height at Jerusalem is 2500 feet above the Mediterranean Sea; but it continues to rise towards the south, until, in the vicinity of Hebron, the elevation is nearly 3000 feet. The city occupies the southern termination of a table-land which is cut off from the country round it on the west, south, and east sides, by ravines more than usually deep and precipitous. These ravines leave the level of the table-land, the one on the west and the other on the north-east of the city, and fall rapidly until they form a junction below its south-east corner. The eastern one—the Valley of the Kedron, commonly called the Valley of Jehoshaphat—runs nearly straight from north to south. But the western one—the Valley of Hinnom—runs south for a time, and then takes a sudden bend to the east until it meets the Valley of Jehoshaphat, after which the two rush off as one to the Dead Sea. How sudden is their descent may be gathered from the fact that the level at the point of junction—about a mile and a quarter from the starting-point of each—is more than 600 feet below that of the upper plateau from which they commenced their descent. Thus while on the north there is no material difference between the general level of the country outside the walls and that of the highest parts of the city, on the other three sides, so steep is the fall of the ravines, so trench-like their character, and so close do they keep to the promontory, at whose foot they run, as to leave on the beholder the impression of the ditch at the foot of a fortress, rather than of valleys formed by nature.
PLAN OF JERUSALEM
By favour of the Palestine Exploration Fund.