Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

Adonijah’s feast, then, was being held at the foot of this cliff, about 70 yards across the valley from En Rogel. Solomon’s party could not be seen because the rising ground of Ophel came between. But when the anointing had taken place at the Pool of Siloam, and the party were going back up the Tyropœon toward David’s house, the people piped their music and shouted their joy till the earth rang again. The attention of Joab was attracted by the sound of the trumpet, and he enquired, “Wherefore is this noise of the city being in an uproar?” The truth was learned, and then Adonijah’s guests were afraid, and rose up and went every man his way.

Solomon’s Change of Residence.—Solomon would at first live in the house of his father David, which was near the stairs which went down to the valley bed. “And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her into the City of David, until he had made an end of building his own house,” &c. (1 Kings iii. 1). “And Solomon was building his own house thirteen years.” “He made also a house for Pharaoh’s daughter” (close to his own house) (1 Kings vii. 1. 8). “And Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the City of David unto the house that he had built for her: for he said, My wife shall not dwell in the house of David, king of Israel, because the places are holy, whereunto the ark of the Lord hath come” (2 Chron. viii. 11). This incidental mention that he brought her up accords well with the relative positions of the two palaces—David’s lower down the slope of Ophel, the new one higher up. The same remark applies to bringing up the ark from David’s house to the Temple.

The Building of Millo.—David having taken the stronghold of Zion improved his new capital by building “round about, from Millo and inward” (2 Sam. v. 9). What Millo was, or where it was located, has been one of the great puzzles of Jerusalem topography. It seems, however, to have been the great dam athwart the Tyropœon Valley. It is possible that even the Jebusites had hit upon the device and had constructed a dam in some rude fashion, and named it by a word of their own language, which afterwards clung to it. Sir G. Grove, in the “Dictionary of the Bible,” conjectures that it was the Jebusites who first built Millo, because it is difficult to assign a meaning to the word in Hebrew, while the Canaanites of Shechem also had a Millo (Judges ix. 6, 20), and because David seems to find it existing and not to build it. The statement that David built from Millo and inward suits very well the identification of Millo with the great dam which was the outer defence of the Tyropœon, and to a great extent of Zion itself. It is not unlikely either that the House of Millo was a castle on the Ophel Hill, close to the eastern end of the dam, and that this was adopted by David as a residence. He may also have strengthened both the castle and the dam. This view of mine has now been adopted by Herr Schick. (See Quarterly Statement, January 1892, p. 22.)

But it was Solomon who so strengthened this work as to deserve the credit of having constructed it. It was one of the great works for the accomplishment of which he made a levy upon all parts of the kingdom (1 Kings ix. 15). The nature of the work is indicated in 1 Kings xi. 27—“Solomon built Millo (and so) closed up the fissure (or cleft) of the city of David his father:” either the two expressions relate to the same work, or the two works are closely associated together. Accordingly, before the work can be begun, Pharaoh’s daughter must vacate the house of Millo. She came up “out of the City of David unto her house which Solomon had built for her: then did he build Millo” (1 Kings ix. 24). The Israelites employed upon the work were the children of Joseph, and their superintendent was Jeroboam, an Ephraimite, probably already acquainted with the similar work at Shechem (1 Kings xi. 28). It is stated in the Septuagint that Jeroboam completed the fortifications at Millo, and was long afterwards known as the man who had “enclosed the City of David.” The work was so well done that Jerusalem was never again attacked from this side, although previously this side was found the most vulnerable, both by David and by the children of Simeon and Judah in earlier time.

If we are to find a Hebrew etymology for the name Millo, it seems to be a noun formed in the usual way by prefixing the letter M to the Aramæan verb l’va, equivalent to the Hebrew lavah,[34] having the meaning to wind or twist, and used to describe stairways as well as serpents and garlands. A dam across the Tyropœon would require the construction of two stairways at least, one from the bed of the Tyropœon to the top of the dam on the Ophel side, and one from the High Town down to the dam on the west.

The Death of Athaliah.—This incident affords indications of locality in beautiful agreement with Nehemiah. When this queen-mother heard that her son, the king, had been killed by Jehu, she snatched at the sovereignty for herself, and her policy was to slay all the seed royal. But one little child escaped, carried off by its nurse, and they were secreted in the Temple by Jehoiada, the high priest. In the seventh year Jehoiada assembled the chiefs of the people in the Temple, produced the little child Joash, stood him upon the platform (or by the pillar) appropriated to the kings, and said, This is the rightful heir! The chiefs shouted their joy, when Athaliah heard the noise and rushed into the Temple to learn the cause. That she should hear so readily and find such easy access to the Temple, accords well with the supposition that she was living in Solomon’s palace, close adjoining the Temple, as Warren places it. When Athaliah saw the state of things, she cried—“Treason, treason!” But she found no friends there. The priest said, “Have her forth—slay her not in the house of the Lord! So they made way for her; and she went to the entry of the Horse Gate to the king’s house; and they slew her there” (2 Chron. xviii. 15; 2 Kings xii. 16). It is implied in this narrative that the Horse Gate was not only by the king’s house, but that it was also the nearest point which could be considered fairly beyond the sacred precincts; and this is in full agreement with the position which we have assigned it.

In the context of the passages just quoted we find that Joash is carried “by the way of the Gate of the Guard into the king’s house.” This gate must, of course, have been on that side of the palace adjoining the Temple courts; it was probably due north of the Water Gate (i.e., the Triple Gate), and it thus again accords with Neh. iii. 25, where the tower standing out from Solomon’s house is said to be “by the court of the guard.” The court of the guard may very well have extended from the Water Gate without to the Gate of the Guard on the Temple side of the palace. From Neh. xii. 39, it appears that there was a corresponding Gate of the Guard at the corresponding point on the north side of the altar.

The Assassination of Joash. When Joash grew to man’s estate he made changes which displeased his people; and the short statement is that his slaves slew him on his bed, “at the House of Millo, that goeth down to Silla” (2 Kings xii. 20, combined with 2 Chron. xxiv. 25). This has been generally regarded as obscure, and some have supposed Silla to be the same as M’sillah, a stairway at the west gate of the Temple, north of Wilson’s Arch (1 Chron. xxvi. 16). But it is more naturally the stairway at Millo itself. Joash was living at Beth Millo, David’s house, and when he heard of the conspiracy he designed to flee down the stairs and through the Gate between two walls; but being a sick man he was being carried on a litter, as Lewin remarks, and while going down Silla,—not while going down to Silla, for there is no preposition here in the Hebrew text—the assassins killed him.

The Wall destroyed by Jehoash, king of Israel, when he came against Amaziah of Judah, extended from the Gate of Ephraim unto the Corner Gate, 400 cubits (2 Kings xiv. 13; 2 Chron. xxv. 23). We can now, by aid of Herr Schick’s plan of the second wall, and our previous study of Nehemiah, see exactly this piece of wall, south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and running east and west.

The Towers built by Uzziah were intended to strengthen the city just in this part where it had been found to be vulnerable. He “built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate, at the Valley Gate, and at the turning of the wall, and fortified them” (2 Chron. xxvi. 9). The “turning” here spoken of is a re-entering angle, and not improbably that one south-east of the Church of the Sepulchre, where we find the “Throne of the Governor” in later time.