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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

SILOAM, Pool of

Pool mentioned in John 9. Jesus, after anointing with clay the eyes of a blind man, directed him to go and wash in the pool. The man obeyed. He washed and came back with his sight fully restored.

The pool of Siloam of NT days marked the emergence of Hezekiah’s tunnel, dug during the threat of the Assyrian invasion about 700 BC. This tunnel is S-shaped and is described both in 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:2-4. Archaeologists found an inscription in the tunnel consisting of Hebrew letters chiseled into the side of the tunnel indicating the progress and the meeting place of the two groups of workmen (each of which had started on one side and worked their way to the middle). This inscription has since been removed and is now in the museum in Istanbul. The ancient Hebrew reads:

When the tunnel was driven through . . . each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through—the voice of a man calling to his fellow. . . . And when the tunnel was driven through, the quarrymen hewed, each toward his fellow, axe against axe; and the water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for 1200 cubits, and the height of the rock above the heads of the quarrymen was 100 cubits.

The purpose of the pool originally was to bring water inside the city walls and deny it to invaders of Jerusalem. It flowed through the temple mount to the inner part of the city, where it was accessible to the residents. Water from Gihon Spring flows through the tunnel, emerges at the pool (also called the King’s Pool in Neh 2:14 and the pool of Shelah in 3:15), continues down the valley through the ancient area of the king’s gardens, reenters the Kidron Valley, and makes its way toward the Dead Sea south of the Essene site at Qumran. The Gihon Spring, the only natural source of water in Jerusalem, is a copious perennial stream. This, together with a rugged terrain, explains the strength of Jerusalem and the reason why it had been chosen for a place of habitation since the early Bronze Age.

Siloam now lies outside the old city of Jerusalem. The pool today measures 50 feet (15.2 meters) long and 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide and lies 16 steps below street level. A Byzantine church stood over the pool until it was destroyed by the Persians in AD 614.