Aqueducts

(Isa. 7:3; 2 Chron. 32:30). The Bible speaks of the aqueducts of the upper pool. Under Hezekiah certain changes were made in the construction of the aqueducts. Solomon says of himself in the Book of Ecclesiastes that he made himself pools of water, to irrigate from them a grove that produced trees (2:6). Perhaps it was these very waters and gardens that the author of the Song of Songs had in mind when he compared his bride to “a garden enclosed,” a “spring shut up” (4:12). Pontius Pilate either built a new aqueduct, or, more probably, restored Solomon’s aqueduct, and it has survived even to the present day, though only a part of it now serves to convey water.

The numerous ruins now found by travelers testify that aqueducts in antiquity were in general very numerous in the East, and were usually built above ground with sturdy vaults, since the ancients did not know that water could be raised to the same height from which it fell. Herod, king of Judea, not only had aqueducts built from Mount Carmel to Caesarea, but also had underground channels built in that city for the discharge of waste; for this reason the public reservoirs were always full of water, and there was such an abundance of water in Jerusalem that, according to the testimony of Eusebius, the whole of Jerusalem was, as it were, literally washed with water, and the barren, rocky soil of the city seemed a flourishing garden of Jehovah.