Hezekiah and the Tunnel to Siloam
Stormie Waters stopped by my place the other morning, and I asked her about a sluice gate because it was just mentioned in my reading material. She said she uses a small version in her prospecting and said big operations have larger devices. I learned that sluice gates control water flow.
King Hezekiah was a godly king when kings of Judah (like his father Ahaz) were wicked, idolatrous sleazebags. His achievements are discussed in the Old Testament. One of these was the tunnel connecting the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam inside Jerusalem — which involved a sluice gate.
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| Inside Hezekiah's Tunnel, Flickr / Ian Scott (CC BY-SA 2.0) |
Extrabiblical verification was small and doubtful, based on a fragment that probably said "Hezekiah" and "pool." (Remember, we're talking about events almost 3,000 years ago.) Hiding in plain sight were inscriptions on the wall testifying of Hezekiah and his deed, corroborating biblical text. Archaeology has never refuted any of the Bible, and has supported it many times over.
Newly deciphered royal inscriptions from Jerusalem powerfully confirm the Bible’s testimony about Hezekiah, king of Judah. Hezekiah was a godly descendant of David who ruled in Jerusalem at the end of the 8th century BC. The Bible describes him as a reformer who “trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him” (2 Kings 18:5).Prior to these recent discoveries, abundant archaeological evidence already supported many details in the biblical narratives about Hezekiah. But the new inscriptions specifically discuss a number of Hezekiah’s deeds—including military actions, religious reforms, and construction projects—that closely parallel biblical statements and confirm their accuracy.
To dig into the rest, see "Discovered—monumental inscriptions of King Hezekiah!"