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Bible Dictionaries
Siloam
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or SILOAM (‘waters of Shiloah ,’ Isaiah 8:6; ‘pool of Siloah ’ [RV [Note: Revised Version.] Shelah ], Nehemiah 3:15; ‘tower in Siloam,’ Luke 13:4; ‘pool of Siloam,’ John 9:7; probably identical with the ‘king’s pool’ of Nehemiah 2:14 ). The name survives to-day in Silwân , the name of the village which occupies the steep E. slopes of the valley of the Kidron from opposite the ‘Virgin’s Fount’ ( Gihon ) to near Bîr Eyyub (En-rogel). The village consists of a northern, older section inhabited by Moslem fellahîn , and a small, southern quarter belonging to immigrant Yemenite Jews from Arabia, while still farther down the valley is an isolated row of huts allotted to the lepers. All the site now occupied by the fellahîn has been built upon in ancient times, and the whole area is riddled with cave dwellings, cisterns, rock-cut steps, and ancient tombs. Some of the caves have apparently served the purposes successively of tombs and chapels, while to-day they are dwellings or store-houses. It may be considered as certain that in NT times, and probably for some centuries earlier, there was a considerable village in this situation. The ‘tower’ which fell ( Luke 13:4 ) may have been a building similar to many to-day perched on the edge of the precipitous rocks above the Kidron. Immediately across the valley, to the N. of Siloam, in the very bed of the Kidron, is the Virgin’s Fount (See Gihon), the original spring of Jerusalem. In early times the water of this spring, after probably filling a pool here, ran down the valley; at a later period the surplus supply was conducted by an aqueduct built along the N. side of the valley (partially excavated near its W. end), to a spot where is situated to-day a dry pool known as Birket el-Hamra . Remains of this aqueduct have been traced. As the water supply was, under this arrangement, vulnerable to attack, king Hezekiah ‘stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David’ ( 2 Chronicles 32:30; cf. 2 Chronicles 32:4 , 2 Kings 20:20 ). The work thus described is the famous Siloam tunnel , 1700 feet long. This runs in an extraordinarily serpentine course from the Virgin’s Fount, and opens in the TyropÅ“on Valley under the name ‘Ain Silwân , or the ‘Spring of Siloam,’ to pour its waters into the pool known as Birket es-Silwân , or the ‘Pool of Siloam.’ These may have been ‘the waters of Shiloah that go softly,’ a great contrast to the mighty Euphrates ( Isaiah 8:6-7 ). Close to the lower opening of the tunnel was found, in 1880, a Heb. inscription giving an account of the completion of the work. Although undated, there is every reason to believe that this is a contemporary account of Hezekiah’s work, and if so, it is the oldest Heb. inscription known.
The original Pool of Siloam, of which the present Birket occupies but a part, was excavated by Dr. F. Bliss, and was shown to have been a rock-cut reservoir 71 feet N. to S. by 75 feet E. to W.; and just outside its W. edge was found a flight of ancient rock-cut steps, probably those mentioned in Nehemiah 3:15 . A covered arcade, 12 feet wide, had been built, probably about NT times, round the four sides of the pool, and a division ran across the centre to separate the sexes when bathing. Such was probably the condition of the pool at the time of the events of John 9:7 . The surplus water of the pool leaves by a sluice at its S. end, and traverses a rock-cut channel to reach the gardens of the Siloam villagers. S. of the Birket es-Silwân is a walled-in area which in recent times was a kind of cesspool for the city, the sewage coming down the TyropÅ“on Valley (now diverted to its proper sewer again) being there stopped by a great dam across the valley. On this dam, at one period, ran the city wall, and Dr. Bliss proved by excavations that it was supported by buttresses of great strength. The area shut off by this dam is the so-called ‘lower Pool of Siloam’ or Birket el-Hamra , and may have been used at one time to store surplus waters from the upper pool. Probably it was the ‘reservoir’ (RV [Note: Revised Version.] ) or ‘ditch’ (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ) ‘between the two walls, for the water of the old pool’ ( Isaiah 22:11 ), that is, the reservoir to which the water from the ‘old pool’ at Gihon was conducted by the earlier aqueduct referred to above, while the dam itself is with some probability considered to be the ‘wall of the pool of Siloah by the ‘king’s garden’ ( Nehemiah 3:15 ). The water of the ‘Ain Silwân is naturally, like that of its source (Gihon), brackish and impregnated with sewage; it also runs intermittently.
E. W. G. Masterman.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Siloam'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/s/siloam.html. 1909.
