Hezekiahs Tunnel - the place I almost died

Hezekiah was the King of Judah around 715 BC. He was the king during a really rough time for Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered by the Assyrians and Judah was only being spared because they basically emptied all the riches from their palace and temple and send them to the Assyrian rules in order to pay tribute and purchase their safety.

In 701 Hezekiah decided he was tired of living in fear of the Assyrians and after the death of one of their rules and the succession of another he just quit paying. This meant almost certain trouble. Assyria was an extra mean kingdom with a brutal, ruthless army that destroyed everything it conquered and struck fear throughout the lands they invaded by doing things like stringing up the bodies of their victims on the city walls. I'm going to geek out here a little and say when the Assyrian army started marching towards you it was like the gates of Mordor opening up - that army, that ferocity was marching straight towards Judah.

Hezekiah was a crafty king and he knew the first place the Assyrian army would try and strike his capitol of Jerusalem was the water supply. Cut of Jerusalems water and you force their surrender. There is no water supply here except for the Gihon Spring which is on the floor of the valley. The city of Jerusalem is constructed up on two hills (creatively called the "western hill" and the "eastern hill" and the only way to get water was to go down into the valley to the east of the eastern hill and bring the water up. It was fortified with a wall but still relatively easy to capture since it is outside the city walls.

Remember how I said Hezekiah was crafty though? The first thing he did was to build a new wall - it went all the way around the spring and around the non fortified parts of the city. it was a HUGE wall project and parts of it still stand today, it is called the "broad wall" The next thing Hezekiah did was to decide to divert all the water from the spring through the city to a secondary more fortified location. How do you move water up a hill though? You don't. You build a tunnel.

So nearly 3000 years ago engineers and laborers went to work digging a tunnel. One group started at the east, one at the west and they used a chissle and dug their way towards each other. This is remarkable. Not only did they dig through really hard rock, but they created a tunnel that weaved through the city, that kept a downhill slope so the water would flow, and they met in the middle. No GPS, no walkie talkies, no iphone map app. It's an incredible sight to behold.

Today, in the ancient city of David tourists can walk through the tunnel. Water no longer really flows through it, our professor assured us that it is only about ankle deep and wandering through the it takes about 45 minutes. This sounded like an adventure. I was in. That was a mistake.

You enter the tunnel way under ground and within 3 minutes it was plain to see that the "ankle deep" statement was a bald faced lie. I was wading in water up to my waste, and it was cold, AND it smelled horrible. There's no going back in hezekiahs tunnel though, so onward we pushed. The next surprise I discovered was that this tunnel was not really made for walking through. It is about 2.5 feet wide and 6 feet high (a little shorter and a bit taller in some places). I didn't think i was claustrophobic, 15 minutes into my cramped little walk I wanted to die a little bit.

When you get to the middle of the tunnel you can actually see a spot where the two digging teams missed each other, the tunnel goes off to one side a few meters then backtracks to meet up with the other side. It AMAZES me that this was the biggest problem they had. I have to wonder when they were building it how they got oxygen? They were deep in a cave holding torches... how did they breathe? How did they find each other? How long does it take to dig a tunnel with a hammer and nail just chisseling away piece by piece. What did they do with all the excess rocks? This tunnel fascinated and horrifies me. Worth the experience for sure, but I will never do it again.

If you want to know how the story with Hezekiah and the Assyrians ends, I recommend reading about it in 2 chronicles 32. It's an amazing story. One of many i'll get to experience in real life over the next three weeks.

ps. my pictures of the tunnel are not awesome because i was in PANIC mode most of the time, but there are a few from the pool of Siloam (see John 9).