JERUSALEM jĭ rōō’ sə ləm (יְרוּשָׁלִָ֑ם; LXX ̔Ιερουσαλήμ; יְרוּשָׁלָ֑יִם; NT, as LXX, or ̔Ιερουσόλυμα [see below, II, D, 3]; foundation of [a] peace [ful one], foundation of Shalem). The world’s most significant city (Ps 87:2-5): from David’s time onward, God’s dwelling place (1 Kings 8:13); and the scene of Christ’s resurrection (Luke 24) and of His return in glory (Zech 14:5).
Outline
I. Geography
A. Location. Jerusalem is situated thirty-three m. E of the Mediterranean and fourteen m. W of the Dead Sea, at an elevation of 2,500 ft., at a major road junction on the crest of W Pal’s. central ridge. This ridge rises slowly from the promontory of Mt. Gilboa in the N (1,700 ft.) to a point near Hebron, c. twenty m. S of Jerusalem (3,370 ft.). Although Jerusalem’s highest point (under 2,600 ft.) cannot rival Hebron to its S, David properly described its location, for most of his subjects, “to which the tribes go up” (Ps 122:4).
From the W, the rail line approaches Jerusalem through Samson’s rugged valley of Sorek (Judg 16:4), still guarded with concrete blockhouses from the 1948 fighting, and ending in the valley of Rephaim (2 Sam 5:22) just S of the city. Until recently, the only alternative route consisted of the Jaffa highway, which branched off from the valley of Aijalon to the N and snaked its way along the canyons, through Abu Ghosh (OT Kiriath-jearim, one of the several sites proposed for NT Emmaus, Luke 24:13) to Jerusalem. But the burned out bodies of Israeli armored cars that to this day line its shoulders bear mute testimony to the difficulty of going up to Zion (cf. Isa 7:6).
From the E, one leaves the Jordan, by Jericho, at over 1,200 ft. below Mediterranean sea level and must then ascend through the barren Senonian chalk wilderness of Judah by the gorge called Adummim (Josh 15:7), the Ascent of “Blood,” prob. because of its red ochre deposits. Rainfall is practically nonexistent here, the winds from the western Sea having been drained of their life-giving moisture by the intervening ridge. The highest point is reached just E of the city, on the 2,650 ft. crest of the Mt. of Olives.
Though difficult of access, Jerusalem enjoys a correspondingly protected location. Furthermore, whereas lacking significant natural resources, it does lie astride the major N-S trade route, which renders its location both commercially and politically strategic. It was its control of this ridge route that prob. dictated its settlement in the first place.
Because of “the mountains...round about Jerusalem” (cf. the pilgrim Ps 125:2) the city’s plateau remains hidden until the traveller suddenly tops one of the higher ridges that surround it. From the E, for example, as he crosses Olivet—as is still done every Palm Sunday, following the course of Christ’s triumphal entry—the whole city of Jerusalem suddenly appears, spread out in a great panorama.
B. Topography. Jerusalem consists of a complex of five, once sharply distinguished hills, carved out of hard Cenomanian limestone, roughly one-half m. square. On the western and southern sides lies the “L” shaped valley of Hinnom (Josh 15:8); eastward is the gorge of the brook Kidron, perhaps Joel’s valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2).
The interior of the square was once bisected by a ravine running from N to S and finally curving into the Kidron just N of its junction with the Hinnom. In NT times it was called the Tyropoeon “cheesemakers” Valley; and it may be (partially) equivalent to the OT מַכְתֵּ֑שׁ, “mortar” (Zeph 1:11). Though still discernible in the N, in the form of a depression W of the Damascus Gate, successive destructions of the city have now obliterated most of its course. Jerusalem’s present day profile, with its apparently uninterrupted rise from the Kidron escarpment westward to “Mt. Zion” (see below) and then with an abrupt drop into the Hinnom Valley, fails to indicate the up to 100 ft. of debris with which the central ravine is now choked.
East of the Tyropoeon lie three hills. The southernmost is the smallest, its crest having an elevation of only 2,200 ft.; but its sharp declivities and narrow ridge-like character, slightly pinched off in the N (cf. K. Kenyon, Jerusalem: Excavating 3000 Years of History, p. 27), made it the most easily defensible part of the whole. Archeological investigation has confirmed that this was the original Zion, or “City of David” (2 Sam 5:7).
Northward (Ps 48:2) lies the broader summit of Moriah, originally a threshing floor, but designated by David as a place of sacrifice and the temple mount (2 Chron 3:1), which it has remained to this day. Its rocky peak, over which the altar of sacrifice was erected, may be identified with the spot on which Abraham was willing to offer up his son Isaac, “upon one of the mountains” of “the land of Moriah” (Gen 22:2). For nearly thirteen centuries it has been covered by the Mohammedan shrine, the Dome of the Rock. The surrounding area is now artificially leveled off to form a roughly rectangular court, 1,000 by 1,500 ft., 2,400 ft. in elevation: the Haram esh-Sharif, or “Noble Sanctuary.”
A fairly flat saddle once separated Moriah from the third, or NE hill, Mt. Bezetha, the peak of which still lies outside the northeastern city wall. The natural lines of demarcation are somewhat obscured, for when Herod expanded the Haram northward, he obliterated a ravine that had formerly cut across the NE corner of the Temple area.
Jerusalem’s western half was subdivided by a larger ravine that branched off midway in the course of the Tyropoeon: the “cross valley,” cutting westward to the present Jaffa Gate. To its S lay what the OT may have designated as Mt. Gareb (Jer 31:39; so J. Simons, Jerusalem in the OT, 231-233, and IDB, II, 853, though see below, II, C, 3), but to which subsequent history, after the abandonment of the original City of David in a.d. 70, has assigned the old name of Zion (Jos. War, V. iv. 1), prob. because of the dominant position of its 2,550 ft. elevation peak. Though Gareb was once again embraced within expanded Byzantine Jerusalem, in a.d. 985 the Mohammedan Caliph of Cairo, so as to shorten the city’s line of defense, once more redirected the southern wall roughly .2 m. farther N, with the result that the southern part of Gareb, together with the whole of ancient Zion, have henceforward remained outside the walls of Jerusalem and have become partially unoccupied.
To the NW, the land stretches off in an incline, broken only by what was once a hill or spur, on which now rests the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
C. Characteristics. The annual rainfall at Jerusalem amounts to about twenty-five inches, but this is concentrated in the winter months. Temperature, moderated by the elevation, shows seasonal averages ranging from 40o to 85o F. Snow is rare; but the stone buildings of old Jerusalem can, upon occasion, become frankly dank and cold, cf. Ezra 10:9: “the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month [early January]...all the people sat in the open square...trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain.” Yet from May until October, the grass turns brown, and the hamsin wind that blows from off the eastern deserts may produce a period of serious heat and drought. Generally, however, the western sea breeze keeps the days mild and the evenings cool.
Two springs provide the water that was so essential for occupation, esp. prior to the coming of the Israelites, with whom appeared also the development of cisterns with linings of waterproof lime. The Gihon (1 Kings 1:33; 2 Chron 32:30), or Virgin’s Spring, issues from a grotto on the Kidron Valley side of the City of David and produces an intermittent stream. En-Rogel (Josh 15:7; 2 Sam 17:17), or Job’s Well, perhaps the “Jackal’s Well” of Nehemiah 2:13, lies farther S, below the junction of the Kidron and the Hinnom. It is a true well, which in winter bubbles up in artesian fashion (November to March, after the seasonal rain has raised the surrounding water table).
II. History
The scientific study of Jerusalem’s history begins with the coming of Edward Robinson, an American pastor, to the city in 1838. It was taken up in earnest by the Palestinian Exploration Fund in 1865, who sponsored the extensive tunneling projects of Capt. (later Sir) Charles Warren (1867-1869), around the Temple area. Moslem opposition then brought such work generally to an end, though Bliss and Dickie were able to sink similar shafts and tunnels around parts of the perimeter of the former city (1894-1897). Scientifically controlled excavation, checked by an accurate system of pottery chronology, began yet another generation later; and even then, religious controls, plus the urban construction that covers most of the land, prevented thorough archeological investigation. A noteworthy exception was the series of campaigns conducted by Kathleen Kenyon in various parts of the city (1961-1967). With the reunification of the city under Israeli control in 1967, opportunities have reopened; and the Hebrew University excavations, commenced by B. Mazar in 1968 outside the western and southern walls of the Temple area, give promise of clearing up a number of remaining historical uncertainties. The Bible constitutes the primary source for reconstructing the history of Jerusalem, unequaled for any other ancient Near Eastern city. Its words are supplemented by an increasing flow of archeological data and also, esp. in its later periods, by contemporaneous, secular literary sources.
A. Canaanite. The earliest remains from Jerusalem consist of Early Paleolithic handaxes (but no actual skeletons), systematically excavated in 1933 from the Sorek plain, or valley of Rephaim, just SW of the present city. Urban culture, however, arose with the coming of the Canaanites in 3000 b.c.
1. Pre-Israelite, to 1406 B.C.The Early Bronze Age (3000-2000 b.c.) Canaanitish settlement developed on the SE ridge, the old city of Zion. Its first historical mention is found at the close of this period, in Scripture, when the patriarch Abraham honored its priest-king Melchizedek (q.v.), minister of El-Elyon (“God Most High,” Gen 14:19), as a true servant of Yahweh (v. 22); he serves indeed in his double office as a type of Jesus Christ (Ps 110:4; Heb 7). It was to the adjoining hill of Moriah (2 Chron 3:1) that Abraham later returned, c. 2015 b.c., to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God (Gen 22:2).
The city is first named in Middle Bronze Age times (2000-1600 b.c.) in Egyp. twelfth dynasty execration texts, c. 1900-1800, which employ the form, Urushalim, “foundation (?) of Shalem”; cf. its initial Biblical designation, in Moses’ writing of Genesis, c. 1450 b.c., as “Salem” (Gen 14:18; cf. Ps 76:2). שָׁלֵ֔ם, q.v., signifies “complete,” “prosperous,” “peaceful” (cf. Heb 7:2), though it may also have been the name of a “prospering” Canaanite deity, Shalem. The name was not originally Heb. in any event.
The choice of Jerusalem’s location seems to have been dictated by factors of defense and of water. The latter was supplied from the Gihon spring in the Kidron Valley below and to the E (2 Chron 32:30), from which a supply tunnel angled upward to within the city; see below. Correspondingly, the E walls, which were once thought to have run along the eastern edge of the crest, and hence to have restricted the city to a width of about 100 yards, are now known, at least from 1800 b.c. onward, to have lain some 50 yards farther E, two-thirds of the way down the slope, which was crowded with houses. The wide northern wall, over 20 ft. in thickness, has not yet been fully exposed, but its area has been closely pinpointed by K. Kenyon’s excavations. They demonstrate that occupation prior to the 10th cent. b.c. began at a point 100 yards S of the present S wall of Jerusalem (op. cit., p. 26). The city then extended about one-quarter m. southward. Its western wall lay on the summit of the ridge, along its W side. Its total area, once thought to have been less than eight acres (which is still not uncharacteristic of Canaan’s towns), is now known to have been almost eleven. Finally, its elevation, while less than Moriah or Gareb, was not such as to impair its security, fire power being limited as it was in those days.
2. Jebusite vs. Israel, to 1003 B.C.Midway in the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 b.c.) Scripture, in its records of Joshua’s wars at the time of the conquest (1406-1400 b.c.), identifies a certain Adoni-zedek as “king of Jerusalem” (Josh 10:1). This Amorite, indeed, headed up the confederacy of southern Canaanitish kings that opposed Joshua; and he lost his life, following their defeat at Bethhoron (10:23, 26; 12:10). But Jerusalem itself seems to have escaped unscathed.
A decade or so later, after the death of Joshua, Jerusalem was captured by the tribe of Judah (Judg 1:1, 8), only to be reoccupied by the Canaanitish Jebusites (Judg 1:21). The eighteenth dynasty Egyp. Amarna tablets include letters from an Abdi-Hipa (a Hurrian, or Horite, name), king of Urusalim or Bethshalem, to the pharaoh Akhenaten (prob. 1379-1361, CAH rev., Chronology, p. 19). They speak of the former’s need for Egyp. mercenary troops in view of the threatening presence of the Habiru (q.v.), possibly the Hebrews. At the time of the Benjaminite outrage early in the 14th cent. (cf. Judg 20:28: Aaron’s grandson was still high priest), Jerusalem is thus disparagingly described as “the city of foreigners” (19:12), “this city of the Jebusites” (v. 11), though actually its moral standards could not have been worse than those of the Heb. Benjaminites to its N (vv. 18, 22, 25). It remained Jebusite until David’s final victory and conquest in 1003 (Josh 15:63; 1 Chron 11:5).
During the period of the judges, the city carried the corresponding name of יְב֔וּס, Jebus (Judg 19:10-11; 1 Chron 11:4). It was at this point, in the 14th cent., that the Jebusites constructed a series of stone filled platforms down the hill slope to the wall on the E side of the city; cf. Jerusalem’s designation as, “by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the side [ASVmg., ‘shoulder’] of the Jebusite southward” (Josh 15:8; 18:16, though technically the city did not then reach to the Hinnom Valley). These stone “shoulders” enabled a more efficient use of the slope for building; but unhappily the eventual collapse of the hillside platforms, combined with quarryings on the crest, have removed all traces of Canaanite buildings.
B. United kingdom
1. David, to 970. Immediately after his consecration in Hebron in 1003 b.c. as king over the united tribes of Israel and his repulse of the Philistines’ attempt to check him at Baal-perazim in the Valley of Rephaim (vv. 18-20) (2 Sam 5:3), David advanced against the still Canaanitish city of Jerusalem, which was separating his own tribe of Judah from that of Benjamin and from the other tribes farther N. Rather than risk a direct assault against the well nigh impregnable walls of the Jebusites (cf. v. 6), David ordered a surprise attack through the צִנֹּ֔ור, or “water course” (v. 8); see below, III, B. Both to reward the individual who would lead this dangerous ascent through the water tunnel, and at the same time to accomplish the replacement of his uncontrollable half-nephew Joab as commander of the armed forces (cf. 3:23-27, 39), David offered this supreme post to whomever should “smite the Jebusites first” (1 Chron 11:6a); “and Joab...went up first [!], so he became chief” (v. 6b). The term Zion, q.v., צִיֹּ֑ון, prob. meaning “fortress,” described the citadel that David then succeeded in taking (v. 5), though it came to signify the SE hill as a whole (2 Kings 19:31) and eventually the entire, expanded city of Jerusalem (cf. Ps 133:3).
David forthwith transferred his residence to Zion, the fortified city of Jerusalem, and named it after himself, “the City of David” (2 Sam 5:9). He also engaged in considerable building. This included his palace, by means of cedar timbers and skilled craftsmen provided by Hiram king of Tyre (v. 11), and the “Millo,” q.v. (v. 9), “a filling,” which may refer to a reinforcing of the system of platforms and terraces already established by the Canaanites on the eastern slope of Zion (K. Kenyon, BA, XXVII [1964], 43; cf. the similar activity by Solomon [1 Kings 9:15, 24] and Hezekiah [2 Chron 32:1-5]).
The strategic importance of David’s move cannot be overestimated. It gave him not only a military location of exceptional strength but also a political position in a city that was essentially his “personal property,” not subject to any of the Israelitish tribes. It was “neutral” as well: situated on a tribal border, and being associated with neither N Israel nor S Judah. David then proceeded to the most significant act of all—making it the religious capital of his nation, by bringing up within its walls the Ark of the covenant (2 Sam 6:12), which made Jerusalem the dwelling place of God Himself. For Yahweh had graciously condescended to come to His people in the form of the Shekinah, q.v., or glory cloud (Exod 40:34, 35), which rested between the two cherubim on the golden plate or “mercy seat” that covered the Ark (25:21, 22; cf. Num 7:89). He could thus be described as, “the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned (KJV, dwelleth) on the cherubim” (1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2).
Ever since the capture of the Ark by the Philistines at the first battle of Ebenezer, c. 1080 b.c. (1 Sam 4:11, 22), it had remained apart from the public worship of Israel (1 Chron 13:3; though cf. 1 Sam 14:18). Even after its return to Israel, however, because of the disaster it had produced at Beth-shemesh (1 Sam 6:19, 20), it had been left at Kiriath-jearim (7:1, 2), farther inland on the road to Jerusalem. But soon after his occupation of Zion in 1003, David assembled 30,000 of the leading men of Israel formally to conduct it into his new capital (2 Sam 6:1, 2). After a three-months’ delay at the house of Obed-edom, occasioned by the death of Uzzah for having profaned the sacred object (vv. 7, 11), the king finally achieved his goal, conducting the Ark within the walls of the City of David and placing it in a tent sanctuary (vv. 12, 17). He instituted regular offerings and a musical service in conjunction with it (1 Chron 16); henceforward Zion was to be “the city of God” (Ps 46:4; cf. 48:2); see below under IV.
David reigned in Jerusalem for thirty-three years, 1003-970 b.c. (2 Sam 5:5). He “took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem” (v. 13), and there were born to him eleven additional sons, including both Nathan and Solomon (vv. 14-16), who appear respectively in the lineal and the official genealogies of Christ as recorded in the gospels (Luke 3; Matt 1). The city came increasingly to be settled by Israelites, esp. of the neighboring tribe of Benjamin (1 Chron 8:28, 32), but also of Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh (9:3), and of course the Levites (v. 34; cf. WBC, pp. 374, 375). Within his new palace, David cared for Mephibosheth, the crippled son of his former friend Jonathan, and his family (2 Sam 9:12, 13); he received officials (10:15; 11:8, 13, 22; 20:22; 24:8); but he also committed his basest crimes, of adultery with Bath-sheba and the murder of her husband (11:1-4, 14, 15). Solomon was eventually born of this union (12:24), c. 990, David’s own high-handedness seems to have contributed to the subsequent deeds of lawlessness committed by his own sons; cf. the insinuation of immunity for Amnon, “son of the king” (13:4) and yet his murder two years later by his half-brother Absalom (vv. 23, 28, 29).
After three years of flight and exile from Jerusalem (v. 38), Absalom was enabled to return (14:23; cf. 15:8); but in about 980, after additional years of plotting, this oldest surviving son succeeded in driving his father out of Zion (15:16, 37) and even occupied the palace, on the roof of which he publicly cohabited with his father’s concubines (16:22; cf. 11:2; 12:8, 11, 12 on its retributive character). Scripture traces David’s flight in detail. Whereas certain points, such as his initial tarrying at בֵּ֥ית הַמֶּרְחָֽק, “Beth-merhak” (15:17 ASV), “at the Far House” (ASVmg.), remain uncertain, much of his route is identified by yet recognizable geographical features. When David’s party had moved eastward, across the Brook Kidron (v. 23), he was overtaken by the high priest Zadok and all the Levites bearing the Ark of the covenant from its tent on Mt. Zion; but David had them return to Jerusalem. The group moved E and “went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives” (v. 30). David was met by Hushai at “the summit, where God was worshiped” (v. 32), indicating the existence of a shrine, perhaps near the present Dome of the Ascension close to the summit of Olivet. David had taken the shorter, and harder, route over the crest of the ridge rather than going around the southern end of Olivet, as does the modern highway to Jericho. “A little beyond the summit” (16:1) he was met by Ziba with provisions, from which point he proceeded past Bahurim (v. 5), perhaps the modern Ras et Tmim, E of Mt. Scopus (N of Olivet; cf. Wright and Filson, The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible, p. 108) and on toward the Jordan. Meanwhile the sons of the priests Zadok and Abiathar were waiting at En-Rogel, just S of Jerusalem, to carry intelligence from Hushai to David (17:16, 17), were almost apprehended at Bahurim (v. 18), but managed to hide and then get the necessary word to David for a prompt crossing of the Jordan River (v. 22). After the defeat and death of Absalom, David was again installed in his capital of Jerusalem (19:15, 40; 20:3).
Near the end of his reign, David, in a moment of faithlessness (cf. Ps 30:5, 6), ordered a military census of Israel (2 Sam 24:1-3), with the result that a divinely sent plague decimated the land (v. 15). When the angel of Yahweh had reached the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite on Mt. Moriah, He was about to “stretch forth his hand toward Jerusalem [to the S] to destroy it” (v. 16); but God stayed His hand. The king therefore erected an altar on the spot and offered up propitiating sacrifices (v. 25). He then consecrated the site as “the house of the Lord [Yahweh] God and here the altar of burnt offering for Israel” (1 Chron 22:1; cf. 2 Chron 3:1); and he proceeded to make elaborate preparations for the construction there of the temple of Yahweh (1 Chron 22:2-19; 28-29:19), to replace the tent sanctuary on Mt. Zion (cf. 2 Sam 1:1-7; 1 Chron 6:32).
In 970 b.c., at the close of David’s reign, his son Adonijah, who stood next to Absalom in point of age, proposed to usurp the throne of Israel from Solomon, the heir designate. While in the very act of being crowned at En-Rogel (1 Kings 1:9), Adonijah heard sounds from the Gihon Spring, 700 yards farther up the Kidron, indicating that Nathan and Zadok had persuaded David to have Solomon anointed there, immediately, as his successor (vv. 38-45). To this day shouting may in fact be heard from one spring to the other, and thus Adonijah’s attempt was frustrated. Shortly thereafter, David died and was buried in the City of David (2:10); see below, III, B.
2. Solomon, to 930. Along with his positive admonitions of faithfulness to God and to the Mosaic law (1 Kings 2:2-4), David had given his son Solomon certain more negative, deathbed instructions about the removal or liquidation, of those who had at various times opposed the king (vv. 5-9). Some were soon slain by Solomon (vv. 25, 34) or banished from Jerusalem (vv. 26, 27); but the Benjamite Shimei, who had cursed David during his flight through Bahurim (2 Sam 16:5-13; cf. 19:16-23), was ordered to build a house in Jerusalem, with the understanding that this asylum should last only so long as he stayed within the city. He was to make no attempt to cross even the Kidron, eastward toward his home (1 Kings 2:36-38; cf. ICC, “Kings,” p. 96). Three years later, in 967, Shimei broke his parole, but as it worked out, by a sudden pursuit westward to Gath to recover two runaway slaves. Upon his return Solomon was informed and Shimei was executed (vv. 39-49).
Like most of his royal successors in Judah, Solomon was born, lived, reigned, died, and was buried at Jerusalem (2 Sam 12:24; 1 Kings 11:42, 43; 2 Chron 1:13; 9:30; cf. Song of Solomon 3:3), Solomon considered Jerusalem as a standard of perfection (Song of Solomon 6:4). He conducted his Egyp. bride into this Davidic city, until he had built her a palace of her own (1 Kings 3:1); he sacrificed before God’s Ark in Jerusalem (v. 15); and he left it for his initial act of dedication to Yahweh and his resultant acquisition of divine wisdom only because the Mosaic Tabernacle had not yet been moved down from Gibeon, six m. to the N (1 Kings 3:4; 2 Chron 1:3-6).
Solomon proceeded to perform the actual construction of the Jerusalem Temple that his father David had wished to build. It took from April/May, 966 b.c. (1 Kings 6:1) to Oct./Nov., 959 (v. 38). Israel provided the labor force (5:13-17), but once again it was Hiram and the Phoenicians of Tyre who furnished both the timber and the skilled workers (5:6-12; cf. 2 Chron 2:7). The great cedar logs were floated as rafts to the port of Joppa, from which they were then transported overland to Jerusalem (2 Chron 2:16). The basic plans for the Temple, q.v., called for an arrangement twice the size of the older Tabernacle but also corresponded to the double chamber, porch, and court of known Egyp. and Phoen. temples of this period. They had been given their written formulation by David and, more fundamentally, by the very Spirit of God (1 Chron 28:11, 12, 19): it was the dwelling of God and, as the Tabernacle before it, symbolized and typified the way of salvation, by which man may come to the presence of God (cf. Heb 8:1-5; 9:23, 24). The building itself faced E and was relatively small: sixty cubits (ninety ft.) long, twenty cubits (thirty ft.) wide, and thirty cubits (forty-five ft.) high, no traces of which have yet been discovered. Importance lay not only in the building but also in the sacred inclosure, with presumably the outdoor altar rather than the most holy place (the “oracle”) of the building resting over the Moriah threshing floor (1 Chron 22:1). This in turn would have required certain leveling and construction of retaining walls; see below, III, B.
The city walls of Jerusalem were necessarily extended northward to include the Moriah area (1 Kings 3:1); and Kenyon discovered that occupation N of the original Canaanite northern wall (see above, A, 1) did in fact begin in Solomonic, 10th cent. times (Jerusalem, p. 56). On the W, the new walls simply continued along the western edge of the summit of the Zion-Moriah ridge; on the E, however, Zion’s walls stood two-thirds of the way down the slope. These Solomon did not seek to extend, but built his northern prolongation along the eastern edge of the crest only (Kenyon, p. 200, note 20a), thus pinching off the width of the city to a little more than fifty yards, at least at the point where Solomon’s addition joined the former northern wall.
Solomon brought the Ark up to Mt. Moriah from Mt. Zion during the Feast of Tabernacles the following year, 958 b.c. (2 Chron 5:2-10). He also reunited it with the remaining elements of the Mosaic sanctuary by bodily transporting the Tabernacle to Jerusalem from Gibeon and laying it up within the new Temple (5:5). The climax of the dedication occured when the theophanic cloud of God’s glory entered and filled the Temple (1 Kings 8:10, 11), so that it became in very truth the “house of the Lord.” Jerusalem was thus confirmed as the chosen city of God, as the place in which his “name” (q.v.), condescended to dwell (2 Chron 6:6).
Solomon also constructed an acropolis complex, with casemate walls and presumably extensive stable facilities (cf. 1 Kings 9:19; 10:26), at the N end of the crest of Zion (Kenyon, BA, XXVII [1964], 41; cf. Jerusalem, p. 56). Among his other public buildings were: the “House of the Forest of Lebanon,” a 180 ft. hall resting on forty-five columns of cedar in three rows; the throne room, which was distinguished as “the porch of judgment”; and a large palace, adequate for the king’s harem of 1,000 women (1 Kings 7:2-8). This last edifice, in fact, required thirteen years for its construction, as opposed to the seven for the Temple (v. 1), though the latter did have the benefit of David’s advance preparations. These structures are described as built “of costly stones, hewn according to measure, sawed with saws” (v. 9), topped by courses of cedar beams (v. 12). Kenyon’s discovery, by the N wall of the old city of Zion, of a proto-Aeolic pilaster capital and of carefully polished facing stones similar to those found in Ahab’s (Phoen.) palace at Samaria suggest the remnants of at least one of the Solomonic buildings at this point (Jerusalem, p. 59). Others were presumably erected to the S of the Temple, where the Aksa Mosque now stands; at the southeastern end of Moriah; and in nearby areas.
The palace of the daughter of Pharaoh lay outside the City of David and “up” (9:24), perhaps between Moriah and Zion, but not on either because of the presence of the holy Ark, with which her own residence was felt to be incompatible (2 Chron 8:11). It may have been associated with Ophel, q.v., the “swelling,” possibly to the NE of the old Zion, where the ridge swings eastward; for the same term, Ophel, may designate a similar “hill” or “projection” at Samaria (2 Kings 5:24).
Scripture states also that Solomon made pools to water his trees (Eccl 2:6), which may well refer to an “upper pool” near Gihon (cf. Isa 7:3; 36:2; the old pool of 8:11b?) and to the construction of the Shiloah water conduit (Isa 8:6) for the water of the spring along the eastern side of Zion to the “lower pool” (22:9). This latter may be identified with the “King’s Pool” (Neh 2:14), or the Pool of Shelah (3:15), at the southern end of the city by the king’s garden (2 Kings 25:4), below the later Pool of Siloam (q.v.).
Evidence concerning the higher, southwestern hill of Jerusalem is sparse. Kathleen Kenyon discovered no occupation on its SE slopes prior to the 1st Christian cent., so its southern portion must not have been included within the city walls until NT times. Her excavations on the northern part of the hill, immediately to the S of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, uncovered a quarry, which would have lain outside any ancient walls, but with an initial 7th cent. b.c. fill (Jerusalem, pp. 152, 153), suggestive of the presence of city by that date at least (and prob. earlier?) to its S. The testimony of Jeremiah 31:38-40 suggests that the incorporation of the northern portion—which includes the peak of the SW hill—into Jerusalem may have been preexilic. At present, the only concrete evidence lies in the fact that Herod’s W side towers were built over previous fortifications, though these may of course be no earlier than postexilic. Solomon, however, in building up other major Israelite cities, is said also to have labored on the wall of Jerusalem (1 Kings 9:15); and, pending the results of further excavation, either he or the prosperous 8th cent. monarch Uzziah (see below, C, 2) would have been the most capable of accomplishing such expansion.
The result is then a city shaped like a great inverted “L,” extending W and S from Mt. Moriah. The southern wall of its western arm has not yet been determined. The large wall at the extreme S that moves across the central Tyropoeon Valley and along the rim of the Hinnom Valley, which was first identified by F. J. Bliss and E. C. Dickie in 1898 as the original Solomonic wall, is now dated by Kenyon only to the time of Herod Agrippa I, a.d. 41-44 (ibid., pp. 155-161) and must be abandoned in favor of something more closely approximating the present SW wall of Jerusalem. The northern wall of the western arm would have followed the natural defense line along the southern edge of the “cross valley” (see above, I, B), moving directly W from the Temple area (Jos. War, V. iv. 1).
Some time after the completion of Solomon’s various building projects, c. 945 b.c., he was visited in Jerusalem by the Arabian queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:2), who was amazed by his civic accomplishments (vv. 4, 5) as well as by his wisdom and spiritual blessings. The king had “made silver...in Jerusalem” as common as stone, “and cedars as plentiful as the sycamore trees” (v. 27). Yet in his latter years, Solomon’s faith suffered eclipse as he became ensnared in the idolatrous practices of his numerous foreign (pagan) wives (11:4-8). He built, for example, “a high place for Chemosh,” the abomination of Moab...on the mountain east of Jerusalem” (v. 7). Tradition locates its site on “the Mount of Offence,” across the Kidron from the Pool of Siloam and the southern end of the SE hill that is Zion. As a result, Yahweh threatened the forfeiture of his kingdom (v. 11); indeed, it was at one of the very exits from Jerusalem that He awarded the whole of N and E Israel to Jeroboam, subsequently the first ruler of the northern kingdom of Ephraim (v. 29).
C. Divided kingdom. Even in His condemnation of Solomon’s latter-day apostasy (cf. Eccl 1:16, 17; 2:9-11), Yahweh had promised a continuation for at least one tribe under the Davidic dynasty, for the sake of “David my servant, and Jerusalem which I have chosen” (1 Kings 11:13, 32, 36). Actually, to the one Davidically-related group, “the tribe of Judah only” (12:20), there was added the tribe of Benjamin also (cf. v. 21), due doubtless to the location of Benjamin, “on the border of which Jerusalem was situated” (KD, “Kings,” p. 179). The prophet Ahijah thus symbolically awarded Jeroboam ten of the tribes, reserving two for Solomon’s son Rehoboam (11:31; cf. 2 Chron 11:3, 23 on Benjamin’s association with Judah and 15:9; 34:6 on southern Simeon’s association with Israel).
1. Judah, to Jehu’s revolt, 841. Upon Solomon’s death in 930, and the refusal at Shechem of northern Israel to accept Rehoboam’s kingship, the latter fled to Jerusalem and sought to raise troops to subdue Ephraim (1 Kings 12:18, 21); but God forbade it. Rehoboam was forced to content himself with defensive measures (2 Chron 11:5-12). Immediately after his own accession in the N, Jeroboam prohibited further pilgrimages to Jerusalem by members of the ten tribes (1 Kings 12:27, 28), though as a result many of the Levites emigrated S, strengthening the religious position of Jerusalem. Northern secular support for Rehoboam came to an end in three years (2 Chron 11:14-17).
The division left Judah seriously weakened from a military standpoint, so that in 926, Shishak (Sheshonk I), first pharaoh of Egypt’s twenty-second dynasty, was able to raid, almost at will, throughout Israel (12:2-4). Jerusalem escaped actual plundering, but only by the payment of a heavy indemnity in treasure (v. 9) arranged between Shishak and Rehoboam, presumably at Gibeon (Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible, pp. 283, 287). This is confirmed by the omission of Jerusalem from the list of plundered cities, as inscribed on the wall of Shishak’s Karnak temple. The years that followed witnessed a further comparative impoverishment of Judah as opposed to the wealth of Israel and its successive capitals. Abijam (913-910) acted in faith and gained a striking victory against Israel, but only when almost overcome (2 Chron 13).
All of the Judean kings of this period are stated to have been buried “in the city of David” (2 Chron 12:16; 14:1; 21:1, 20), just as had David and Solomon before them (1 Kings 2:10; 11:43). In the description, however, of the burial of Asa son of Abijam in 869, Scripture states that it was “in his own sepulchres (vault, BV) that he had hewn out for himself in the city of David” (2 Chron 16:14). Although this might suggest, “not in the general tomb of the kings” (KD, “Chronicles,” p. 370), the fact that he is said to have been “buried with his fathers” (1 Kings 15:24), a feature that had not appeared in the summaries of previous reigns but that is found henceforth for every monarch up to Hezekiah, implies that it may have been Asa who was responsible for the construction of Jerusalem’s royal necropolis (see below, III, B, and J. Simons, Jerusalem in the Old Testament, chart of Biblical citations on pp. 201-204).
Jehoshaphat (872-848) succeeded in strengthening the garrisons in Jerusalem (2 Chron 17:2, 13, 19); and he regularly employed the city as a center for judicial reform (19:8), for assembly in times of crisis (20:4, 5, 18), and for the celebration of triumphs (vv. 27, 28). Under his son Jehoram, Jerusalem suffered attack by Philistines and Arabs, who succeeded in breaking into the city and even looting the royal palace (21:16, 17). It is significant that Jehoram is singled out for having led Jerusalem into apostasy (vv. 11, 13), due in large measure to his wife Athaliah, daughter of Ahab and Jezebel in the N (v. 6). He died early in 841, after a reign of only eight years, of an incurable disease of the bowels (vv. 18, 19). This, plus the fact of his whole unworthy administration, may account for his burial outside the tomb of the kings, though still in the City of David (v. 20) and “with his fathers” (2 Kings 8:24), i.e., others of the royal family. His son Ahaziah reigned during only part of one year and then lost his life to Jehu, in the latter’s northern revolt against the dynasty of Ahab. Ahaziah was brought to Jerusalem and buried in the royal tomb (9:28).
2. To the fall of Samaria, 722. Jehu’s revolt of 841 disrupted the course of both Heb. kingdoms. In the S it led to a six year usurpation by Athaliah, queen mother of Ahaziah. The boy king Joash was restored to the throne at an age of seven by the high priest Jehoiada. The latter had summoned faithful leaders out of all Judah (2 Chron 23:2) and had Athaliah executed at the horse gate of the palace (v. 15), not to be confused with the Horse Gate that was one of the main entrances to the city (see below, III, A). In both N and S, it made possible a period of Syrian domination. Hazael of Damascus advanced as far as Gath in the SW, and only a tribute gained by stripping Jerusalem’s Temple and royal palace of their gold and treasures was able to save the city itself (2 Kings 12:18, 19). This was particularly discouraging, for Joash had been distinguished by his concern for the repair of the now deteriorating Temple (v. 5). Finally in 813, his twenty-third year, he and his high priestly advisor, Jehoiada, had overcome priestly inertia and inefficiency by means of a special campaign and offering chest, so that considerable improvement was achieved (vv. 11, 12, 14). It was Joash’s own later faithlessness, including even martyrdom for Jehoiada’s son Zechariah who had rebuked him, that had led Yahweh to deliver up Jerusalem to a markedly inferior Syrian army (2 Chron 24:23, 24). The merit of Joash’s regent Jehoiada is indicated by the latter’s receiving burial in the City of David among the kings (v. 16); but, as in the case of his grandfather Jehoram, Joash died in disgrace and was buried outside the tomb of the kings, but within the City of David (v. 25).
His son Amaziah, who acceded to the throne in 796, suffered such a defeat before the armies of N Israel that Jerusalem was plundered and 600 ft. of the northern wall, from the Gate of Ephraim to the (NW) corner gate, was demolished (2 Kings 14:13, 14). Thiele dates this precisely to 790 b.c., the time of Uzziah’s elevation to coregency (Mysterious Numbers of the Heb. Kings, 1st ed., pp. 70-72; contrast his less likely, earlier date in the 2nd ed., p. 83).
Uzziah, the son, accomplished major reconstruction, including the wrecked Corner Gate and the Valley Gate (q.v.); see below, III, A (2 Chron 26:9). He erected catapults and other military engines for the defense of Jerusalem’s ramparts; “And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong” (v. 15). Kenyon’s excavations have indicated a fairly complete rebuilding of the old Jebusite walls of 1800 b.c. at this time, after some 1,000 years of use, and a bit farther down the eastern slope of Zion (Jerusalem, p. 67; cf. Manasseh’s “outer” wall, 2 Chron 33:14). Uzziah may also have been responsible for the recently unearthed fortress and palace at Ramat Rahel, three m. to the S of Zion (M. Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem, p. 38).
He and his son and co-regent Jotham (751-736) seem to have been responsible for levelling out the “pinched off” area of the Solomonic extension of Jerusalem between Zion and Moriah (27:3; cf. II B. 2 above, and Ophel), by running a wall so as to include much of the slope of this eastern part of the ridge, just as was already included along Mt. Zion to the S (cf. Angle). Because of Uzziah’s eventual death by leprosy, 739 b.c., his interment, although in the City of David (2 Kings 15:7), is specified as “in the burial field which belonged to the kings” (2 Chron 26:23), that is, “not in the tomb of the them...that his body might not defile the kings, but only in the neighborhood of royal graves” (KD, “Chronicles,” p. 430). That he was buried “...with his fathers” (2 Kings 15:7) might then indicate the less honorable tomb of his grandfather Joash, and perhaps of Jehoram as well; see above. J. Simons, however, suggests: “not in one of the monumental rock tombs underneath, but in the ‘field’ above” (Jerusalem in the Old Testament, p. 205). This might account in turn for the subsequent removal of his remains to another location; in 1931, E. L. Sukenik discovered in a museum on the Mount of Olives a limestone tablet, a little over one ft. square, dating to c. the birth of Christ, and reading in four lines of Aram., “Hither were brought the bones of Uzziah, king of Judah. Not to be opened.”
The works of Uzziah and Jotham proved sufficient for the latter’s son Ahaz to withstand a siege by Pekah and Rezin of Samaria and Damascus in 734 b.c. (2 Kings 16:5; Isa 7:1, 2). Both Syrians and Ephraimites were able to carry off thousands of Judean captives (2 Chron 28:5, 8; cf. vv. 9-15 on the return of 200,000 from Samaria). The Philistines and Edomites did the same on their respective borders (vv. 17, 18), which may account for the prophecies of Obadiah and Joel at this time (cf. Obad 11, 19, 20; Joel 3:4, 19; cf. E. J. Young, An Introduction to the Old Testament, rev. ed. [1960], pp. 277, 272) and the latter’s proclamation of a fast and solemn assembly in Jerusalem (2:15). Contrary to the admonitions of Isaiah (Isa 7:4-9), Ahaz forsook faith in God, submitted to the rising power of the Assyrians, and appealed to them for deliverance (2 Kings 16:7-9; 2 Chron 28:16), though this led to the fall of the northern kingdom, twelve years later in 722, and to the great Assyrian oppressions of Judah in the decades following.
Ahaz (743-728) was one of Judah’s most undesirable monarchs. He “cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God, and he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord; and he made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem” (2 Chron 28:24). He is the first to be mentioned as practicing idolatry in the Hinnom Valley (v. 3), going as far as child sacrifice. Among the 8th cent. prophets, Isaiah and Micah were particularly outspoken in their condemnation of the sins of contemporary Jerusalem (cf. Isa 3:8; 10:10, 11; Mic 1:5; 3:10; cf. also Amos 2:4, 5 for the north). Ahaz lost his throne in 728 b.c. after a sixteen year reign (2 Kings 16:2; cf. 17:1; 18:1) and died two years later (Isa 14:28; cf. v. 29 and J. B. Payne, BS, CXXVI [1969], pp. 41, 42). For his weakness and iniquity he was excluded from the tombs of the kings, though he was interred in Jerusalem (2 Chron 28:27) in the City of David (2 Kings 16:20).
In the following year, 725 (which seems to have constituted the first official year of his son Hezekiah, 2 Chron 29:3), the latter instituted a series of reforms in Jerusalem: reopening the Temple (v. 3); burning the pagan articles that were found in its courts, over the ledge in the Kidron Valley to its E (v. 16; cf. 30:14); and sending from Dan to Beer-sheba, including the northern tribes, proclamations to keep the Passover (30:1, 5-9). Some of