Hezekiah's Tunnel and Israel Museum ... by Tommy

Shalom Y'all. It is I, the T man alive and well. I realize that it has been quite awhile since I have written anything, but you all probably knew it would be like that from the start. I am not very good with the computer and I do not type fast. However I do enjoy writing every now and then and hope to be doing so more often in the near future.

So here we go, Hannah was very nice and uploaded all of theses pictures for me, so now I'm gonna try to tell you about them ...... Let me know how I do :)

Here are some pictures from Tuesday - June 14th.

Hezekiah's Tunnel is a tunnel that (you guessed it) dates back to the time of King Hezekiah. There are at least two references in scripture that talk about this tunnel 2 Kings 20:20 And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And 2 Chronicles 32:30 This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.

Here is a little bit of history of Hezekiah's Tunnel: In 701 BCE, King Hezekiah prepared the tunnel as a defense against an invading force, led by the Assyrian General Sencherib, who was laying siege to the city. In the Book of Chronicles, we read how Hezekiah stopped up the single source of water in the area, the Gihon spring. King Hezekiah's goal was twofold. Not only would he cut off the water supply to the invading army, but he could also provide an abundance of water for the residents of Jerusalem. In the end, Hezekiah was victorious. Jerusalem withstood the vicious siege and a defeated Sencherib, leaving him with his Assyrian army in disgrace.

There is so much history about this tunnel, but I will not explain about it any further. I think y'all get the idea of what it was used for. But for those of you who do not understand, my advice would be to go there and see it for yourself :) ... Oh yeah, I suggest you go and see it for yourself either way. And if you need a guided tour, just let me know, I'd be more then happy :)

A garden near the entrance of the tunnel.

Steps leading down to the entrance.

You had to walk quite a distance to get to the tunnel. I was usually in the lead ... you know, kinda the daring one :) or protective - I'm still trying to make up my mind :)

The steps down to the tunnel!

Cathrin and Yunis came along with us.

There were quite a few steps and it continually got narrower and narrower as you went down :)  Not exactly a place for claustrophobic people, although you do have a lot of head room - in most places.

I cannot remember what the significance of this was, other then a hole in the ground, but here it is anyway :)

A small room off to the side of the tunnel, there were quite a few of these.

Yunis was having a great time until we got to the water part of the tunnel. On our way into the tunnel, we got stuck in between two groups of school children on a field trip :) I don't think a single one of them knew how to talk quietly; they were yelling and screaming the whole way. I cannot blame Yunis for getting scared at all. I ended up carrying him most of the way but after awhile he got used to the water and the screaming and had a blast :)

Don't worry, Hannah did not put the dent in my head, it had something to do with lighting in the background :)

Cross walks and bracing to hold up the ground and buildings that are on top of us :)

All of the old looking rocks date back to the time the tunnel was built. There is sooo much that has not been uncovered.

The Canaanite Tunnel, is a separate smaller tunnel from the Hezekiah Tunnel but it is in a very close proximity to it. It is currently a dry tunnel only about 400 feet long. However Hezekiah's Tunnel has water in it and it is about 1750 feet long. We did not do the the Canaanite Tunnel; we wanted to rough it and get wet :)

Here is the Hezekiah Tunnel. The water is not very deep, about two and a half at the deepest, but most of the way it was only about a foot to a foot and a half deep. However, it could easily be thirty or forty feet deep if they filled it with water. That was how tall the tunnel was in many places, but it was only about three feet wide at the widest point and no more then two foot at the narrowest point. With such tall ceilings, the sound echoed very well ... Oh Yeah, did I tell to you that we got caught in between two groups of school children yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs? It was quite LOUD to say the least :)

Me in the front, carrying Yunis (you can barely see his head peeking over my right shoulder) followed by Cathrin and and Hannah bring up the rear and taking pictures. We all had our loaded backpacks on and were doing our best to squeeze through. At one point I wondered if I was going to make it through a certain point with my backpack on my back and Yunis in my arms. Yunis and I became great buddies and he loved his rides in my arms or on my shoulders. At one point (on one of his many rides), he told me in German that I was too bumpy and he wanted to get down :) I did know what he was saying so I kept walking :) After a little bit Cathrin translated what he said.

Hannah had to take her own picture, due to the fact that I could not go back and get one of her.

There are many channels that lead off from the main tunnel, I think this is one of them :)

Exiting the water part of the tunnel. The water was sooo cold, but it felt very good. However if you ever get a chance to do it, I recommend wearing some sort of flip flop or sandal. I did it barefoot and it was quite a challenge to not stub my toe or step on a sharp rock :) I made it through without getting too beat up!

The Pool of Siloam. This is the pool of water where the Temple Priest would go down yearly on the last day of Sukkot (Tabernacles). He would draw water from this pool, and take it back up to the Temple and pour it out on the Alter. John 7:37-38 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Although scripture does not say it, it is believed that it was at the time when the Priest were pouring the water on the Alter that Yeshua stood up and said what He said in the verse above. I cannot say for sure that that is how it happened (seeing as I was not there), but we do know that it was somewhere in the same time frame since both of these things happened on the same day, that being the last great day of Sukkot.

I made it! Although it was quite embarrassing to walk around with the front of my shorts wet like they were :) I was glad that everyone else around me knew that I had just come from the tunnel and that the low water in it was the culprit :)

Another pool - I think it was another section of The Pool of Siloam.

After we left the tunnel area, we had to walk along the outside of the City of David (as the area of the tunnel was called) to get to the exit. While walking along, we saw these caves. They are believed to be the burial sites of king David and his family. Whether that is the case or not I do not know, but it was neat seeing them.

On Wednesday morning (June 15th), we visited the Israel Museum. The structure below is the well-known famous Shrine Of The Book. It is where they house the Dead Sea scrolls. The white structure resembles the lid of the clay jars that they found the scrolls in. They did not allow us to take any pictures inside the shrine, but we did get to go in and take a look around. Except for a small section of Isaiah, they do not have any of the original scrolls on display. They do however have copies of the scrolls on display.

Walking in the museum ... besides all of the buildings, there are huge garden areas that you get to walk through. They are very nice and well kept.

The Shrine Of The Book.

I think that this next picture was one of my favorite parts of the whole museum. It is a model of the second Temple and the city of Jerusalem at that time period.

I do not know who built this model, but whoever it was did a fabulous job. Kol HaKavod (Well Done)!

We were able to go up on an overlook area and take this picture. The person on the right in the picture is Cathrin. It kinda gives you an idea of how big the model is.

The Temple, with Hannah in the background.

Yunis was glad to be on his feet again. He had had a long ride on my shoulders on the way to the museum, due to the fact that we did not know which bus to take and had to probably walk about a mile and a half to get to the museum.

Can you imagine coming to this holy site three times a year to worship YHVH Our Elohim - the one and only living God? What a time of rejoicing that must have been! I look forward to the day when we will all (and I mean all - every nation and every tongue) come to YHVH's Holy Temple and worship Him. No longer will there be strife, no longer will there be sickness and disease, no longer will there be division in the body of Messiah, no longer will families be split in two, no longer will people question whether Yeshua in Messiah, etc. We will all live as one people under one ruler Yeshua the Messiah. YHVH I pray that you will speed this day. I long with my whole heart for the coming of Your son Yeshua HaMosiach Amen.

A map explaining what the different buildings are.

A marble column dating back at least to the time of Yeshua.

A view of the southeast from the museum. You can see the beginning of the Judean wilderness in the background.

A map of Jerusalem in the time of the second Temple.

Cathrin took this picture of Hannah and me.

And a close up :)

Some friendly Israeli girls took this picture for us.

And this one.

The Knesset building.

Walking to the artifacts part of the museum.

Once again we were not allowed to take pictures inside of the buildings, but we did have a very funny experience. After walking around the different buildings and seeing tons of ancient artifacts, we looked at the clock and realized that it was time for us to leave the museum so that we could be on time for our next appointment. As we were walking along, Hannah was in the front and we were looking for an exit. I was not paying much attention to where we were headed, but was just following Hannah. Next thing I know, she pushes open a door and walks outside. Cathrin followed her, so naturally I did the same. As soon as I hear the door click shut behind me, I knew something was wrong. I looked up to realize that we had just walked out a fire escape door and were now on the roof of the museum :) By this time Cathrin realized what had happened and so had Hannah. 

We started trying to figure out a way to get out of the situation that we were in. My first thought was of the door, so I turned around to open it and found to our disappointment that it could only be opened from the inside :) We then started looking for steps or a ladder to get down. There were neither of those, so we decided to knock on the glass door when someone walked by. The glass was so thick that no one could hear us on the inside and it was tented so dark that we could hardly see when someone walked pass on the inside. By this point Cathrin and I were both laying into Hannah, in a friendly way though :)  After a few minutes a security man came along and opened the door. And unlike Adam I did not say "It was the woman". I just apologized and we proceeded on to the real exit. I was in the lead this time and we made it out without any further incident, beside the fact of giving Hannah a hard time the rest of the day :)

Well I had better be getting along. I've been kinda long winded and I have other things that need to be gotten to. I plan to write in the near future about some of the different lessons that YHVH taught me while over there.

Shalom until the next time,

T for the two of us.

P.S. If any of you are receiving these posts via email and there is something mentioned about a video, then you will need to click on the link to go to the actual blog to watch. I figure that you have figured that out by now, but just in case you had not, I thought I'd inform you.