spoken of in Isaiah 14:23 are the marshes caused by the ruin of the canals
of the Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Babylon.
The cisterns or pools of the Holy City are for the most part excavations
beneath the surface. Such are the vast cisterns in the temple hill that have
recently been discovered by the engineers of the Palestine Exploration
Fund. These underground caverns are about thirty-five in number, and are
capable of storing about ten million gallons of water. They are connected
with one another by passages and tunnels.
- POOLS OF SOLOMON the name given to three large open cisterns at
Etam, at the head of the Wady Urtas, having an average length of 400 feet
by 220 in breadth, and 20 to 30 in depth. These pools derive their chief
supply of water from a spring called “the sealed fountain,” about 200
yards to the north-west of the upper pool, to which it is conveyed by a
large subterranean passage. They are 150 feet distant from each other, and
each pool is 20 feet lower than that above it, the conduits being so arranged
that the lowest, which is the largest and finest of the three, is filled first,
and then in succession the others. It has been estimated that these pools
cover in all a space of about 7 acres, and are capable of containing three
million gallons of water. They were, as is generally supposed, constructed
in the days of Solomon. They are probably referred to in Ecclesiastes 2:6.
On the fourth day after his victory over the Ammonites, etc., in the
wilderness of Tekoa, Jehoshaphat assembled his army in the valley of
Berachah (“blessing”), and there blessed the Lord. Berachah has been
identified with the modern Bereikut, some 5 miles south of Wady Urtas,
and hence the “valley of Berachah” may be this valley of pools, for the
word means both “blessing” and “pools;” and it has been supposed,
therefore, that this victory was celebrated beside Solomon’s pools (2
Chronicles 20:26).
These pools were primarily designed to supply Jerusalem with water.
From the lower pool an aqueduct has been traced conveying the water
through Bethlehem and across the valley of Gihon, and along the west
slope of the Tyropoeon valley, till it finds its way into the great cisterns
underneath the temple hill. The water, however, from the pools reaches
now only to Bethlehem. The aqueduct beyond this has been destroyed.