Hezekiah's Tunnel

Tina Huber

Reflection Day 2

January 4,2012

I have so many thoughts as I take in all the scenery and history to the places we are going, that I have trouble remembering it all when I get back at the end of the day. Maybe it is partly fatigue or maybe my age. The only way I can really reflect is to trace my steps and give a play by play of where we went and what it means to me. We started our day with class room time. It was 4 hours of some intense cramming of geology, history, and archeology. I don’t know if you know this, but I did so well in high school history I was asked to come back a second year. I find it much more fascinating now then I did then. Our afternoon started off as we headed towards the Tyropeon Valley to the City of David. This is quite a hike. Going there it was easy to keep up with the pace because it is all down hill. You tend to forget as you are trotting along that on your way back it will be the opposite! The area we went to is under an immense amount of excavation. This is a densely populated residential area so many archeological items can’t be reached because they are in someone’s basement! As we arrived to The City of David we viewed the excavation of an area that is dated to the 10th century. This is an important find because it fits the time line of David and some believe it to be the royal fortress. We also viewed two homes dated 6th century that are on the side of the hill that had been excavated. From what was found they can determine that this was a wealthy area and civilized. We even saw a toilet carved out of stone! One of the homes called the ‘burnt room’ had burn marks that were 2-3 ft deep in the stairs and I believe this destruction is dated to the Babylonian exile. I found myself envisioning this. Sitting in this area you can hear everything from the hills. We could hear traffic, prayers from mosques, kids playing, and construction sounds. There was a bible verse read from Zephaniah that made me ponder the terror they must have felt before the siege. They could hear the screams from those in the hillside after the first wall was invaded. I couldn’t help but think of the panic and fear they must have felt. Some of the artifacts found was a pile of arrows, so these families obviously knew of the threat against them and were trying to prepare for a last stand. I really wish there was more time to take it all in. We are given so much information in a short amount of time and have a very hurried schedule. I was disappointed that we were moving so fast through stuff. We then went to Hezekiah’s tunnel. What an amazing site! I was filled with so many questions. How in the heck were the able, in the 6th century, to start digging at two opposite sides of the city and meet up in the middle? How long must that have taken?

Hezekiah must have been preparing for Assyria’s invasion or their own revolt for years. We all know how long government road construction projects take. This has been my favorite trip so far. I liked it because the long hike through the tunnel gave me time to reflect on these questions and more. I started thinking about my disappointment of hurrying through or past all the other sites and how this was going to have an impact on my experience. I then felt differently when we came out of the tunnel at sat at the stairs of the Siloam Pool. Aubrey, our professor, shared that this pool is mentioned in the old and new testaments. She read passages from Luke 13 and John 9 where Jesus preformed a miracle on a man who had been blind from birth. We discussed how these were messianic miracles and the Pharisees would have recognized these as such. This is when it hit me. My experience will be completed not at the end of this trip when I have finished visiting all the biblical sites that I can. My experience will be completed when I go home and am reading God’s word. Imagery will pop into my head. I’ll grasp the culture, the land, and the history of this area and how that formed the perspective of the writers. Psalm 121 was read today. I’ve never tried to picture the writer standing in the streets of this city where you are surrounded by hill after hill after hill and then turning to the hill with the Temple on it. Where does my help come from it comes from the LORD. This was the perfect time to get over the hurriedness because we left there and hiked up a severe incline back to the Jewish quarter to view the Broad Wall before nightfall. This wall changed how the bible was viewed by archeologists. It has a first temple dating! This wall was built by Hezekiah in preparation of being attacked by the king of Assyria. It was a miracle that they didn’t fall to Assyria when the rest of the region did. Hezekiah’s preparation of the water tunnel and this wall protected his people. I finished the day by walking back to the dorm with Olivia talking about everything we had seen and heard. And that was the perfect end to a busy day!