The city was blessed with natural valleys around it that made it easy to defend. The city walls and its fortress provided additional protection. God was with David and allowed him to capture Jerusalem from the Jebusites. Later, he built stronger and additional walls to fortify the city, and it would become known as the City of David.
And David built the city all around from the Millo inward. Moriah upon the threshing floor of Araunah. Then he erected the temple upon it and added walls from the City of David to encompass the Temple Mount and temple. According to an Assyrian stele found in the ruins of the royal palace of Nineveh, Sennacherib conquered 46 cities in Judea prior to attempting to conquer Jerusalem.
As Hezekiah began to prepare for what he knew would be a terrible siege by a merciless Assyrian war machine, he had to figure out how to protect his people. This meant building new defenses. King Hezekiah fortified the existing walls of the city and built a new wall in a rapid manner to protect those living outside the city walls.
He also made weapons and shields in abundance. It was a massive undertaking and measured around 2. A portion of the wall was discovered in the s by Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad and dated to the reign of King Hezekiah — BC. The curving tunnel is yards m. It was chiseled from both ends to the middle at the same time. It took the water from the Gihon Spring under the mountain to the Pool of Siloam below the city.
When the Babylonians conquered and destroyed Jerusalem in BC, they also destroyed the walls and burned the gates with fire. However, God sovereignly moved in the heart of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, to allow Nehemiah to rebuild the walls. Nehemiah —3: Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, 2 that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah.
And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire. The rebuilding and repair of the wall was a miracle. Nehemiah — So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days.
During this time, known as the Hasmonean period —63 BC , Jerusalem was rebuilt along with its walls. In 19 BC, the master-builder, King Herod the Great, began his life's most ambitious building project. He undertook the rebuilding of the temple and the Temple Mount on a massive scale. He took the expansion of the Hasmonean Temple Mount and extended it on three sides, to the north, west, and south. This expansion also included some additional wall construction on the north side of the city walls.
The archaeology of the Temple Mount today confirms this enlargement. It would be this city layout that would exist during the time of Christ.
Agrippa I began the construction of an additional wall of the city which was completed just at the beginning of the First Jewish—Roman War in 66 AD. This would be the largest area the city walls would encompass. In the 16th century, Suleiman decided to rebuild the city walls on much of the remains of the ancient walls that already existed.
However, much of the southern part of the city walls were omitted in the new construction. They were completed in and are the walls that exist today. Jerusalem Overview. Jerusalem Holy Sites Overview. Antonia Fortress. Church of the Holy Sepulchre. City of David Overview. Dominus Flevit Church: Triumphal Entry. Eastern Gate. Garden of Gethsemane. Leaving a comment is easy!
If you don't want to mess with logging in to a service, just: 1. Write your comment, and include your name and email. Click: "I'd rather post as a guest. Click the arrow to leave your comment. Wayne Stiles Menu Skip to content. Follow me on Twitter Like me on Facebook. The Walls of Jerusalem through the Centuries The walls of Jerusalem and its gates have expanded and contracted through the centuries like the breathing of a living being.
You'll also like these posts. Get Encouraged the Easy Way! Now check your email to download your e-book and confirm your subscription. Well, there was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. First Name. Email Address. The tradition of visiting the Western Wall, touring the length of it and praying next to its gates is an ancient tradition, centuries old. The Western Wall is a retaining wall of the Temple Mount compound.
During the Second Temple period, a commercial street ran alongside it, featuring stores that offered goods to the many pilgrims who made the trip to the Temple. During excavations conducted by Professor Benjamin Mazar between , the southern section of the street was revealed under a pile of shattered Western Wall stones.
This is visible today. The Small Western Wall is the name of the additional exposed section of the Western Wall located approximately meters north of the Prayer Plaza.
It is reached via a narrow alleyway near the Iron Gate, located in the Muslim Quarter. Ever since the Six Day War, groups of tourists have visited this site and on Friday evenings, Jews come to the praying wall to pray the Shabbat evening prayer service.
The total length of the Small Western Wall from the entrance gate at the south, until the supporting arch of a Mamluk era building, to the north is The width of the plaza in front of it is 4. The wall contains stones from different time periods, with the largest of them measuring 1. The rabbi of the Western Wall at the time, Rabbi Meir Yehuda Getz of blessed memory , gathered the stone shards with great reverence and exhibited them at the Western Wall Plaza.
The Great Course is the name given to a layer of huge stones from the days of Herod the Great, which can be seen from the Great Hall in the Western Wall tunnels. This course of stones is the tallest and longest in the Western Wall and its stones are the largest building stones found in Israel.
The first stone towards the south of the Great Course is its largest: it is Its weight is estimated at several hundred tons. The length of the second stone is 2.
In the days of the Second Temple, one of the western gates to the Temple Mount was positioned above it. A stairway led from the gate to the street which descended to the southern part of Jerusalem. The arch was uncovered in by a British scholar named Edward Robinson. The width of the arch is Under the arch, the width of the street is about 8 meters. In , American tourist and researcher, Dr. The original gate led down under the area of the Temple Mount, and a stairway led from it up to the Temple Mount plaza.
This gate is also mentioned in the writings of Joseph ben Matityahu Flavius Josephus. The prayer and the names of the gates were discovered in the Cairo Geniza, and date to the tenth century.
It is the largest of the Great Bridge vaults. The arch was built during the ancient Muslim period, in the same location as a previous narrow arch which stood there during the Second Temple period. The length of the arch is 15 meters and the span is
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