Note 1 — ISAIAH. (continued 6)
Reading edition
All accounts combined in asserting that the waters of the two pools of Siloam, as well as that of the many fountains of the “Mosque of Omar,” proceed from a spring or reservoir of water beneath the Temple vaults. There was no period of its history when such a provision would not have been important to the Temple for the ablutions of the Jewish, no less than of the Mussulman, worship; or to the city, which else was dry even to a proverb. It was the treasure of Jerusalem, its support through all its numerous sieges, the “fons perennis aquæ” of Tacitus, the source of Milton’s
“Brook that flowed Hard by the oracle of God.”
But, more than this, it was the image which entered into the very heart of the prophetical idea of Jerusalem (Ps. xlvi. 4, lxxxvii. 7; Isa. xii. 3). It is the source of all the freshness and verdure of the vale of Hinnom. In Ezekiel’s vision the thought is expanded into a vast cataract flowing out through the Temple rock eastward and westward into the ravines of Hinnom and Kedron, till they swell into a mighty river, fertilising the desert of the Dead Sea. And with still greater distinctness the thought appears again, and for the last time, in the discourse, when in the courts of the Temple, “in the last day, that great day of the feast” [of Tabernacles], “Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me. . . . out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”—Stanley.
The expression in Isaiah, “waters of Shiloah that go softly,” seems to point to the slender rivulet, flowing gently, though once very profusely, out of Siloam into the lower breadth of level, where the king’s gardens, or “royal paradise,” stood, and which is still the greenest spot about the Holy City, reclaimed from sterility into a fair oasis of olive groves, fig-trees, pomegranates, &c., by the tiny rill that flows out of Siloam. A winter-torrent, like the Kedron, or a swelling river like the Euphrates, carries havoc with it by sweeping off soil, trees, and terraces; but this Siloam-fed rill flows softly, fertilising and beautifying the region through which it passes.—Bonar.