Jewish Young Men Dance and Sing in Excitement

While visiting the Pool of Siloam, we observed some young Jewish men, very excited to be in Jerusalem, dancing and singing Hava Nagila at this site.

The Pool of Siloam is a rock-cut pool on the southern slope of the City of David, the original site of Jerusalem, located outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. The pool was fed by the waters of the Gihon Spring, carried there by two aqueducts.

The Pool of Siloam was first built during the reign of Hezekiah to provide a water supply inside the City during a siege. The pool was fed by the newly constructed Siloam tunnel. Prior to this, the Gihon Spring had emptied into a large open basin at its source before being conveyed to the City by an aqueduct. This basin is sometimes known as the Upper Pool (2 Kings 18:17, Isaiah 7:3). This aqueduct was very vulnerable to attackers so, under threat from the Assyrian King Sennacherib, Hezekiah sealed up the old outlet of the Gihon Spring and the Upper Pool and built the underground Siloam tunnel in place of the aqueduct (2 Chronicles 32:2-4). During this period, the Pool of Siloam was therefore sometimes known as the Lower Pool (Isaiah 22:9). It seems likely that during the Governorship of Nehemiah (from 445 BCE), the pool was also known as the King's Pool (Nehemiah 2:14).

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