2 Chronicles 32:4 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water? So there was gathered much people ... who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, х nachal (H5158) hashowTeep (H7857)] - the torrent that overflowed or was flooded (cf. Psalms 46:4; Isaiah 8:6). 'Where these various fountains were, we have now no positive means of ascertaining; though Enrogel, and the spring now called the Virgin's Fount, may well he numbered among them. Josephus mentions the existence of various fountains without the city, but does not name any of them in this connection but Siloam. "The brook," however, is located with sufficient precision to enable us to trace it very definitely. We are told that "it ran through the midst of the land." Now, a stream, running through either the Kidron or Hinnom valley, could, in no proper sense, be said to run "through the midst of the land;" but one flowing through the true Gihon valley, and separating Akra and Zion from Bezetha, Moriah, and Ophel, as a stream once doubtless did, could, with special propriety, be said to run through the midst of the land on which the (Holy) City was built. And that this is the correct meaning of the phrase is not only apparent from the force of circumstances, but is positively so declared in the Septuagint, where, moreover, it is called a "river," which, at least, implies a much larger stream than the Kidron, and comports well with the marginal reading, where it is said to "overflow through the midst of the land." Previous to the interference of man, there was, no doubt, a very copious stream that gushed forth in the upper portion of that shallow, basin-like concavity north of Damascus Gate, which is unquestionably the upper extremity of the Gihon valley, and pursuing its meandering course through this valley, entered the Tyropoeon at its great southern curve, down which it flowed into the valley of the Kidron' (Barclay's 'City of the Great King').