Dictionary

SILO'AM, or SHILO'AH (sent), the name of a pool and of a tower. A pool near Jerusalem, referred to as "the waters of Shiloah that go softly," and as "the pool of Siloah by the king's garden." Isa 8:6; Neh 3:15. It is also called "the pool." John 9:7-11. These texts give us no clue to the location of the pool. Josephus mentions it as a fountain and says it was at the mouth of the Tyropoeon valley, and there is no doubt as to its identity with a pool now existing at the mouth of this valley, about 450 yards south of the Haram wall and 60 yards west of the southern point of Ophel at Jerusalem. There are really two pools, of which the smaller may be properly the pool of Siloain. It is 52 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 19 feet deep. A flight of steps leads to the bottom, and the pool has yet a good supply of water, generally somewhat salt to the taste, perhaps from the soil through which it percolates, and it is, moreover, polluted by the washerwomen and tanners by whom it is constantly used. The pool is partly hewn out of the rock, partly built with masonry, and columns extend along the side walls from top to bottom. The water is supplied from the Fountain of the Virgin, with which the pool is connected by a zigzag tunnel, cut in the solid rock, 1708 feet long. Robinson, Barclay, and Warren crawled through this passage, which is 16 feet high at the entrance, and only 16 inches at its narrowest part. In this tunnel a remarkable inscription was discovered in 1880. It is Hebrew, and narrates the completion of the tunnel. The inscription is reputed to belong to the age of Hezekiah or possibly of Solomon. See p. 2. The Pool of Siloam. Arabs call it Bicket el-Hamra, or the "red pond." Warren supposes this to have been the pool dug by King Hezekiah. the "king's pool" of Nehemiah and the Siloam of Josephus. It was to the pool of Siloam that a Levite was sent with a golden pitcher on "the last day, that great clay of the feast" of tabernacles. To this Jesus alluded when, standing in the temple, he cried, "If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink." John 7:37-39. To this pool the blind man was sent to wash, and returned seeing. John 9:7-11. Its waters now refresh the gardens below, making them the greenest spots about Jerusalem, and abounding in olives, figs, and pomegranates. The tower of Siloam, which killed eighteen men in its fall. Luke 13:4. There is nothing in the text to determine the spot where the tower stood. The name is preserved in a wretched little village among the tombs on the east side of the Kedron, and now called Kefr Silwan. The village is at the foot of the third height of Olivet, near the spot where Solomon built the temples to Chemosh, Ashtoreth, and Milcolm, known as "the Mount of Corruption."