2 Chronicles 32:4 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The brook that ran through the midst of the land— As a plentiful fountain was very necessary, in that country, at the places, where they were wont to rendezvous; so the want of water must have been very terrible in any after-encampments, while they pursued the war, and especially when they had to stay any time in such a place. The thought, therefore, of Hezekiah, here proposed to his princes, of stopping all the fountains, and the brook which ran through the midst of the land, was at this critical juncture very natural. But it may be thought to be a proof of the great simplicity of antiquity to entertain such a design, and the more so if he was able to effect it. How could fountains and a brook be so stopped, as totally to be concealed? How easy was it for so mighty an army as the Assyrian to sink a multitude of wells? But, odd as this contrivance may seem, it was actually made use of at the same place many centuries after the time of Hezekiah, and greatly perplexed an European army, and that too assembled from various warlike countries. Previous to the siege of Jerusalem by the Croises in 1099, its inhabitants, having had advice of their coming, stopped up the mouths of their fountains and cisterns for five or six miles round the city, that, oppressed with thirst, they might be obliged to desist from their design of besieging it. This management, we are told, occasioned infinite trouble afterwards to the Christian army, the inhabitants in the meantime not only having plenty of rain water, but enjoying the benefit also of the springs without the town, their waters being conveyed by aqueducts into two very large basons within it. These precautions, indeed, did not hinder the Croises from succeeding at last; but then their army was distressed with thirst in the most terrible manner; though it had the assistance of some of the Christian inhabitants of Beth-lehem and Tekoa, who, being in the army, conducted the people to fountains four or five miles distant; for the nearer neighbourhood of Jerusalem was a very dry and unwatered soil, having scarcely any brooks, fountains, or pits of fresh water; and all those they filled up with dust, and by other means, as much as they could, and either broke down the cisterns of rain water, or hid them. All this shews the impracticability of an army's supplying itself with water by sinking of wells, springs being rare there, and the soil, on the contrary, extremely dry. It shews also, how easily such wells as have a supply of water may be concealed, which are what the term here מעינות mangianoth rendered fountains frequently means, and what Hezekiah must mean, since there was no fountain to form any brook in the near neighbourhood of Jerusalem, except that of Siloam, which, I presume, is the brook that Jeremiah speaks of, and which, in the time of the Croisades, was not, it should seem, attempted to be stopped up. What the cause of that was, we are not told; but it seems that the waters of some springs without the city were conveyed into Jerusalem at that time; and that Solomon, in his reign, had attempted to do the like, as to part of the water of the springs of Beth-lehem, and effected it. See Maundrell's Travels, p. 89. It was no wonder, then, that Hezekiah should think of introducing the waters of Siloam in like manner into the city, in order at once to deprive the besiegers of its waters, and to benefit the inhabitants of Jerusalem by them. Probably it was done in the same manner that Solomon brought the waters of Beth-lehem thither; namely, by collecting the water of the spring or springs into a subterraneous reservoir, and from thence, by a concealed aqueduct, conveying them into Jerusalem; with this difference, that Solomon took only part of the Beth-lehem water, leaving the rest to flow into those celebrated pools which remain to this day; whereas Hezekiah turned all the water of Siloam into the city, absolutely stopping up the outlet into the pool, and filling it up with earth, that no trace of it might be seen by the Assyrians: which seems, indeed, to be the meaning of the sacred writer in the 30th verse, where the original may as well be rendered, Hezekiah stopped the upper going-out of the waters of Gihon, and directed them underneath to the west of the city of David; and so Pagninus and Arius Montanus understand the passage. He stopped up the outlet of the waters of Gihon into the open air, by which they were wont to pass into the pool of Siloam, and became a brook; and by some subterraneous contrivance directed the waters to the west side of Jerusalem. See Observations, p. 337.