Nehemiah 2:11-17
Neh 2:13 “And I went out by night by the valley-gate, and towards the dragon-well, and to the dung-gate.” אל־פּני, in the direction towards. The dragon-well only occurs here by this name. Judging from its position between the valley-gate and the dung-gate, it is either identical with the well of Gihon (Robinson, Palestine, ii. p. 166), whose waters supply the upper and lower pools in the valley of Gihon, the present Birket el Mamilla and Birket es Sultan, or situate in its immediate neighbourhood. The valley-gate is the modern gate of the city leading to the valley of Gihon, and situated at or near the present Jaffa gate; see rem. on Neh 3:13. The dung-gate (האשׁפּת שׁער), which in Neh 3:13 also is placed next the valley-gate, and was a thousand cubits distant therefrom, must be sought for on the south-western side of Zion, where a road, to the south of Nebi Dâûd and the Zion gate, now descends into the valley of Hinnom, towards Sûr Baher. “And I viewed the walls of Jerusalem which lay broken down, and its gates which were consumed by fire.” The word שׁבר, which the lxx read, “I was breaking down,” gives no tolerable sense; for it cannot mean, I broke through the walls, or, I made a path through the ruins. Many MSS, however, and several editions, offer שׂבר; and R. Norzi informs us that D. Kimchi and Aben Ezra read שׁבר. שׂבר, of which only the Piel occurs in Hebrew, answers to the Aramaean סבר, to look to something; and to the Arabic sbr, to investigate; and ב סבר means to look on, to consider, to direct the eyes and thoughts to some object. In the open מ of הם Hiller conjectures that there is a trace of another reading, perhaps מפרצים; comp. Neh 1:3. Neh 2:14 “And I went on to the fountain-gate, and to the king’s pool, and there was no room for the beast to come through under me.” The very name of the fountain-or well-gate points to the foundation of Siloah (see rem. on Neh 3:15); hence it lay on the eastern declivity of Zion, but not in the district or neighbourhood of the present Bâb el Mogharibeh, in which tradition finds the ancient dung-gate, but much farther south, in the neighbourhood of the pool of Siloah; see rem. on Neh 3:15. The King’s pool is probably the same which Josephus (bell. Jud. v. 4. 2) calls Σολομῶνος κολυμβήθρα, and places east of the spring of Siloah, and which is supposed by Robinson (Palestine, ii. pp. 149, 159) and Thenius (das vorexil. Jerus., appendix to a commentary on the books of the Kings, p. 20) to be the present Fountain of the Virgin. Bertheau, however, on the other hand, rightly objects that the Fountain of the Virgin lying deep in the rock, and now reached by a descent of thirty steps, could not properly be designated a pool. He tries rather to identify the King’s pool with the outlet of a canal investigated by Tobler (Topogr. i. p. 91f.), which the latter regards as a conduit for rain-water, fluid impurities, or even the blood of sacrificed animals; but Bertheau as an aqueduct which, perhaps at the place where its entrance is now found, once filled a pool, of which, indeed, no trace has as yet been discovered. But apart from the difficulty of calling the outlet of a canal a pool (Arnold in Herzog’s Realencycl. xviii. p. 656), the circumstance, that Tobler could find in neither of the above-described canals any trace of high antiquity, tells against this conjecture. Much more may be said in favour of the view of E. G. Schultz (Jerusalem, p. 58f.), that the half-choked-up pool near Ain Silwan may be the King’s pool and Solomon’s pool; for travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries mention a piscina grandis foras and natatoria Siloë at the mouth of the fountain of Siloah (comp. Leyrer in Herzog’s Realencycl. xvi. p. 372). See also rem. on Neh 3:15. Here there was no room for the beast to get through, the road being choked up with the ruins of the walls that had been destroyed, so that Nehemiah was obliged to dismount. Neh 2:15 Then I (went on) ascending the valley and viewing the wall, and so entered by the valley-gate, and returned. ואהי with the participle expresses the continuance of an action, and hence in this place the continuous ascent of the valley and survey of the wall. The נחל which he ascended was doubtless the valley of Kidron (קדרון נחל, 2Sa 20:23; 1Ki 2:37, and elsewhere). ואבוא ואשׁוּב are connected, שׁוּב expressing merely the idea of repetition (Gesenius, heb. Gram. §142, 3): I came again into the valley-gate. Older expositors incorrectly explain these words to mean, I turned round, traversing again the road by which I had come; Bertheau: I turned to go farther in a westerly direction, and after making the circuit of the entire city, I re-entered by the valley-gate. This sense is correct as to fact, but inadmissible, as requiring too much to complete it. If we take אשׁוּב adverbially, these completions are unnecessary. Nehemiah does not give the particulars of the latter portion of his circuit, but merely tells us that after having ascended the valley of Kidron, he re-entered by the valley-gate, and returned to his residence, obviously assuming, that from the upper part of the vale of Kidron he could only return to the valley-gate at the west by passing along the northern part of the wall. Neh 2:16-17 He had spoken to no one of his purpose (Neh 2:12); hence the rulers of the city knew neither whither he was going nor what he was doing (i.e., undertaking) when he rode by night out of the city gate accompanied by a few followers. As yet he had said nothing either to the Jews (the citizens of Jerusalem), the priests, the nobles, the rulers, or the rest who did the work. החרים and הסּגנים are connected, as in Ezr 9:2 השּׂרים and הסּגנים. The nobles (חרים, nobiles) or princes are the heads of the different houses or races of the people; סגנים, the rulers of the town, the authorities. המּלאכה עשׂה, the doers of the work, are the builders; comp. Ezr 3:9. When these are, in comparison with the priests, nobles, and rulers, designated as יתר, the remnant, this is explained by the fact that the priests and rulers of the people were not actively engaged in building. המּלאכה, the work in question, i.e., here the building of the walls. כּן עד, until thus, i.e., until now, until the time apparent from the context. Nehemiah then, having inspected the condition of the ruined walls, and being now persuaded of the possibility of restoring them, made known his resolution to the nobles, the rulers, and the community, i.e., to a public assembly called together for this purpose (Neh 2:17). “Ye see (have before your eyes, know from experience) the distress that we are in, that Jerusalem lieth waste: come (לכוּ), let us build up the walls of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.” In other words: Let us by building our walls put an end to the miserable condition which gives our adversaries occasion to reproach us.
Copyright information for
KD