Moore Perspective: A Biblical Journey Through the Bible Lands: Israel (Part 9 of 10)

The Kidron Valley

The 20-mile (32 km) Kidron Valley runs north-south between the Mount of Olives and the eastern edge of Jerusalem, down to the Dead Sea. Sections of the valley have been called the King’s Valley (Gen. 14:17; 2 Sam. 18:18), the Valley of Blessing (2 Chron. 20:26), and the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2, 12).¹

King David crossed this valley when escaping the coup of his son Absalom (2 Sam. 15:23). In the same valley the reforms of Judah’s kings Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah involved destroying the vestiges of idolatry of their predecessors (1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chron. 29:16; 30:14; 2 Kings 23:4-6). The evil usurper Athaliah was executed here at the end of her six-year reign of terror in Judah (2 Kings 11:16; cf. Josephus, Ant. 9.7.3). In the 5th century BC, Nehemiah passed along the valley at night as he surveyed the city’s damaged walls (Neh. 2:15). The valley became a burial site (2 Kings 23:6; Jer. 31:38-40), and hundreds of ancient tombs remain to this day.

Approximately 40 feet (12 m) deeper in the 1st century AD, Jesus was tempted by the devil to jump from the highest point of the temple into the valley below (Matt. 4:8). The Lord and his disciples crossed this valley on multiple occasions as they traveled back and forth from Jerusalem to Bethany, the Mount of Olives, and Gethsemane (cf. John 18:1).

The Gihon Spring emerges in the Kidron Valley, where Solomon was anointed as king (1 Kings 1:33-45). It was the main water source for the city and flowed approximately 586 yards (535 m) southwards to the Pool of Siloam.

The Valley of Ben-Hinnom

To the west and southwest of Jerusalem is the Valley of Ben-[“son of”] Hinnom or simply Hinnom (Josh. 15:8; 18:16). After Solomon foolishly set aside a place of worship for Molech (1 Kings 11:7), within the next couple of centuries his descendants were offering their children to Molech as burnt sacrifices (2 Chron. 28:1-3; 33:1-6). The particular location in the valley was called Topheth (Jer. 7:31), and among the many reforms of Josiah in the 7th century BC was the defilement of this place (2 Kings 23:10). From that time onward the valley became a refuse dump for putrid waste, rotting animal carcasses, decaying corpses of executed criminals, and all manner of filth. It was a place where fires burned continually in the futile attempt to deplete the amassing mountains of garbage and to mask the horrid stench.

In Mark 9:42-48 three times Jesus graphically emphasizes the importance of ridding oneself of whatever leads to sin in order to avoid ending up in the place he describes as Gehenna. While this term is rendered in most English versions as “hell,” it is derived from the Aramaic Gēhannā and its Hebrew equivalent Ge Hinnom, meaning “Valley of Hinnom.” Similar to picturing heaven with the most beautiful and precious things known to man (e.g., Rev. 21:11-21), the Lord portrays the destination of the wicked with imagery familiar to his listening audience. The most disgusting place imaginable was the rubbish dump outside of Jerusalem, with its decomposing cadavers covered in maggots (“where their worm does not die”) and its perpetual smoldering (“and the fire is not quenched”).

The Tyropoeon Valley

Giv'ati Parking Lot Excavation

Jerusalem’s Central Valley (cf. Isa. 22:1; Jer. 21:13), known in the 1st century AD as the Tyropoeon (“cheesemakers”) Valley (Josephus, Wars 5.4.1), was the commercial hub during the Second Temple Period, situated between the more highly elevated upper city in the west from the lower city in the east (the old City of David). At one time it separated Mount Zion and Mount Moriah, merged with the Kidron Valley, and emptied into the Ben-Hinnom Valley. But it has been filled with earth and debris and is now covered by houses, buildings, and roads.

On the eastern slope of the Tyropoeon Valley at the northwest corner of the City of David, an ancient complex of fortified walls and rooms was discovered underneath the Giv’ati Parking Lot in 2015, identified as the Seleucid Acra built by Antiochus IV Epiphanes during the Intertestamental Period in 168 BC, prior to the Maccabean revolt (cf. 1 Maccabees 1:35-38). Other archaeological excavations in the area include the Pool of Siloam and the South Stepped Street (featured in the previous post), and Hezekiah’s Tunnel.

Hezekiah’s Tunnel

King Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, was the thirteenth king of Judah in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC (2 Kings 18:1; 2 Chron. 29:1). To prevent the Assyrians from blocking or stealing water during a siege, Hezekiah had a tunnel dug just south of the Temple Mount, connecting the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley to the Pool of Siloam on the west side of the City of David (2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chron. 32:30). The Siloam Inscription at the southern end of the tunnel recounts how the digging crews started at each end and in two years met in the middle.

Today the 1,750 feet (533 m) S-shaped tunnel (a.k.a. the Siloam Tunnel), discovered in 1838, is located in the Arab community of Silwan in eastern Jerusalem. Visitors can wade through the dark tunnel, in some places less than three feet (1 m) wide and less than five feet (1.5 m) in height.

Reflections

Although the city of Jerusalem has significantly changed through the centuries, archaeological discoveries have allowed us to revisit a number of places we read about in scripture, reaffirming the historicity of the biblical record and reminding us of God’s active involvement in the affairs of his human creation. “Those who trust in the Lord Are like Mount Zion, Which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, So the Lord surrounds His people From this time forth and forever” (Psalm 125:1-2).²

--Kevin L. Moore

Endnotes:

¹ Judah’s fourth king Jehoshaphat, whose name means “Yahweh judges,” blessed the LORD with the people of Jerusalem and Judah in the Valley of Berachah (“Blessing”) after God delivered them from their adversaries (2 Chron. 20:26-27). Thus, “the Valley of Jehoshaphat” became a symbol of divine judgment against the enemies of God’s people.

² Scripture quotations are from the NKJV.