In the days of Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, the stairway shaft in the Fuller’s Field is spoken of again, and in a way that quite confirms our previous conclusions. Sennacherib, while besieging Lachish, sent his Tartan and his Rabshakeh with a strong force against Jerusalem, as an easy prey. The Assyrian officers pitched their camp at the north-west of the city, on the high ground, which was ever after known as the “Camp of the Assyrians.” But, seeing the strength of the city, they made no assault upon it; they sought a conference with Hezekiah to induce him to surrender. Learning where his palace was, that is, David’s house, on the slope of Ophel, they came and “stood at the passage of the upper pool, which is at the staircase of the Fuller’s Field” (2 Kings xviii. 17). There they called to the king, and when Hezekiah, consulting his dignity, deputed his Prime Minister, his Secretary, and his Recorder to represent him, these officers spoke from the top of the wall. The circumstances may seem to require that the wall should extend a little more southward than the wall found by Warren, but they seem to be good evidence that the Ophel shaft was outside the wall, and that the king’s house was within shouting distance of the shaft, or at any rate that the Assyrian generals thought so.
Jerusalem was not taken at this time; but in expectation of a siege, Hezekiah had made great defensive preparations. For one thing he gathered many labourers and choked up all the fountains outside the city and stopped the flow of the brook (2 Chron. xxxii. 3). He stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon and brought them straight down on the west side of the City of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30). He gathered together the waters of the lower pool; he made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool; he made a pool and a conduit and brought water into the city (Isaiah xxii. 9, 11; 2 Kings xx. 20). It is probable that most of these statements relate to the same piece of work, and that work the making of Siloam Pool and the tunnel to bring water to it from the Virgin’s Fountain. There had been an “old pool” of Siloam, which is clearly traceable south-east of the present one, and this was the “lower pool of Gihon;” while the Virgin’s Fount was the “upper pool” or the “upper spring of the waters of Gihon.” The water had previously flowed from the one to the other, by an open channel down the Tyropœon Valley--a channel which has been struck at some points--and this was “the brook that flowed through the midst of the land.” The lower pool and the waters of Siloah were referred to by Isaiah in the previous reign (that is, he speaks of the waters of Siloah that go softly, viii. 6, and he implies a lower pool by speaking of the upper pool). It is reasonably argued by Dr Chaplin[35] that Siloah and Gihon were identical, and that the terms applied not only to the spring or pool but to the canal that joined them. We may assent to this if we keep in mind that the open canal existed before the rock-cut tunnel. The only difficulty we have is in thinking of the new Siloam as a reservoir between the two walls, and in understanding the use of making the tunnel if Siloam was to be outside the city. Some writers, therefore, suppose that the first wall of the city actually bent round Siloam on the southward side.