Pool of Siloam #68

The Pool of Siloam was a reservoir at the southern end of the ancient City of David in Jerusalem, and it is the place where Jesus sent a man born blind to wash away the mud he had applied to his eyes (John 9:6-7). The name comes from the Hebrew Shiloah, and John explains it by adding that the word means “Sent” (John 9:7). The pool is tied both to the engineering feat of King Hezekiah and to one of the best-known miracles in the Gospel of John.

Biblical Significance

The story begins when Jesus passes a man blind from birth and his disciples ask whose sin caused it. Jesus answers that the man’s condition is an occasion for the works of God to be displayed, then makes mud with his saliva, puts it on the man’s eyes, and tells him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (John 9:1-7). The man obeys and comes back seeing. When his neighbors ask how his eyes were opened, his answer is short: “I went and washed, and I received sight” (John 9:11). The healing sets off a long dispute with the religious authorities, and the chapter ends with the man’s confession of faith in Jesus (John 9:35-38).

The waters of Siloam already had a place in the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah, speaking to a people who had rejected quiet trust in God, contrasted “the waters of Shiloah that go softly” with the mighty river of Assyria (Isaiah 8:6). Later, when Assyria threatened Jerusalem, King Hezekiah stopped the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled its water “down to the west side of the city of David” (2 Chronicles 32:30; 2 Kings 20:20). That channel, known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, is roughly 1,750 feet (about 533 meters) long, and it still carries water from the Gihon spring to the Siloam area. Luke also mentions “the tower in Siloam” that fell and killed eighteen people, a tragedy Jesus used to call for repentance (Luke 13:4).

Today

For many years, pilgrims were shown a smaller pool at the mouth of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, which dates from the Byzantine era and is called the Pool of Siloam today. In 2004, workers repairing a water pipe uncovered a set of large stone steps nearby, and excavators identified a much bigger pool from the time of the Second Temple, with wide stepped sides. Its excavators and many scholars believe this is the pool of John 9, the one pilgrims would have used for ritual purification on the way to the Temple, though the identification is not universally accepted and excavation is still ongoing in the area.

Hezekiah’s Tunnel is one of the most famous surviving works of ancient engineering in Jerusalem. In 1880, a Hebrew inscription was discovered inside it, describing how two teams of workers digging from opposite ends met in the middle. The inscription is now kept in a museum in Istanbul. Visitors can still walk through the water-filled tunnel today.