POOL OF SILOAM.
On the white ceiling above me, I wrote with the smoke of my candle, “God is love.” I sang, and the music went ringing and reverberating adown the long, winding labyrinths of rock as I sang:
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.”
Leaving this cave, let us now go down south of the city. Just where the two ravines meet, we come to the Pool of Siloam. Here our Blessed Lord once spat upon the ground, made clay of the spittle, anointed a blind man’s eyes, and told him to wash in this Pool of Siloam. The man did wash his eyes, and at once received sight for blindness. The Pool is preserved to this day. Its length is fifty feet. It is fourteen feet wide at one end, and seventeen at the other, and has a depth of eighteen feet. It is walled up with rock. A flight of stone steps leads down into it from the southern end. Rev. Mr. El Kary, of Shechem, the only Baptist preacher in Palestine and Syria, was baptised in this Pool. It is now partially filled up with mud; still it contains a considerable quantity of water, and I go down into it and bathe my face.
In the valley, below the Pool, is a large vegetable garden and olive orchard. Vegetation luxuriates in this rich valley, which is constantly supplied, by means of irrigation, with water from the Pool of Siloam.
The ravine east of Jerusalem, the one which separates the city from the Mount of Olives, is known as The Brook Kedron. But the lower end of this “brook,” near the Pool of Siloam, is called The Valley of Jehoshaphat. This is the Jewish cemetery. The valley and the mountain sides on either side of the brook is one vast graveyard, and it is bristling thick with white stone slabs, which serve as head-boards to the graves. Jews from all parts of the world are constantly coming back here to be buried. According to their belief, the Final Judgment will take place in this Valley of Jehoshaphat. They say the name is significant—Jehoshaphat, “Jehovah judgeth.” They quote Joel III: 2 and 12—“I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat.” “Let the heathen be awakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen around about.”
Continuing up this valley, we soon come to the tombs of Zachariah, Absalom, and St. James, which were mentioned in a previous chapter. Passing these by, we follow the valley northward for a mile or more, and finally come to the celebrated Tombs of the Kings. The peculiar construction of these tombs, as well as the historical interest attaching to them, entitles them to a more elaborate description than my limited space will allow.
TOMBS OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH.