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Bible chapter guide
2 Kings 20
Hezekiah, sick to death, prays and is given fifteen more years, with the shadow going back ten steps as a sign. He shows envoys from Babylon all his treasures, and Isaiah warns that everything will one day be carried off to Babylon. His tunnel brought water into the city.
Summary written for the Labs; read the chapter itself for the full text.
What happens in this chapter
Hezekiah falls ill, and Isaiah tells him to set his house in order because he will die. The king turns his face to the wall, prays and weeps, and before Isaiah has left the middle of the city the word comes back: fifteen more years, rescue from Assyria, and healing by the third day, with a cake of figs laid on the boil. As a sign Hezekiah asks for the shadow to go back ten steps on the sundial of Ahaz, and it does. Envoys come from Berodach-baladan of Babylon, Hezekiah shows them everything in his storehouses, and Isaiah warns that all of it, and some of his sons, will one day be carried to Babylon. The chapter closes with a single line on his works, the pool and the conduit that brought water into the city, before Manasseh succeeds him.
What the lab shows, and where to look
Only the last verses of this chapter have a lab, but they are the ones people ask about. The Hezekiah's Tunnel lab shows the ridge of the City of David see-through, with the tunnel winding about 533 m from the Gihon spring to the pool at the south end. Open Hezekiah's tunnel for the numbers, then Walk the tunnel, a lamplit walk through it (the rock surface is a photographed texture of generic limestone, not of this tunnel, and the light is illustrative), and The breakthrough, where the two crews met. The pool at the tunnel's end explains that Hezekiah's own pool has not been certainly found. The verse page for 2 Kings 20:20 sets out the text, the inscription and the dating. The illness, the sign and the envoys from Babylon have no lab.
- Hezekiah's tunnel · Hezekiah's Tunnel
- Walk the tunnel · Hezekiah's Tunnel
- The breakthrough · Hezekiah's Tunnel
- The pool at the tunnel's end · Hezekiah's Tunnel
- 2 Kings 20:20
Questions people ask
Can you still walk through Hezekiah's tunnel?
Yes. The tunnel is in the City of David in Jerusalem, and water from the Gihon spring still runs through it, so visitors wade from the spring end to the Siloam end, with a torch. For most of the way the water is between ankle and knee deep, deeper in places near the start (up to about 70 cm), and it varies with the spring's flow. It is about 533 m long and about 60 cm wide, with headroom from about 1.1 m to 5 m. The lab's walk follows its real course and fall, simplified.
Did Hezekiah really dig the tunnel?
Most scholars think so, but it is debated. Kings says he made 'a pool, and a conduit' and Chronicles that he brought the Gihon's water down to the west of the City of David; neither names this tunnel or gives its length. Radiometric dating of the plaster and stalactites (2003) and the script of the inscription point to about 700 BC; pottery at the northern end has led others to argue for an earlier start, about 800 BC, which Hezekiah may have finished, and a few date the inscription much later.
What is the Siloam inscription?
Six lines in the old Hebrew script, cut into the tunnel wall about 6 m in from the southern end. It tells how the two crews, with three cubits still to cut, heard each other's voices and then struck pick against pick, and gives the tunnel as 1,200 cubits. It does not name a king. Found in 1880, it was hacked out of the wall in 1890 and broken, recovered by the Ottoman authorities in 1891 and is now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums; a cast marks its place.
See it in the Labs
- verse/2-kings-20-202 Kings 20:20Open
- Jerusalem Through the AgesHezekiah's Jerusalem · Jerusalem Through the AgesOpen
- Jerusalem Through the AgesHezekiah's tunnel · Jerusalem Through the AgesOpen
- Jerusalem Through the AgesThe pool at the tunnel's end · Jerusalem Through the AgesOpen
- Hezekiah's TunnelHezekiah's tunnel · Hezekiah's TunnelOpen
- Hezekiah's TunnelWalk the tunnel · Hezekiah's TunnelOpen
- Hezekiah's TunnelThe breakthrough · Hezekiah's TunnelOpen
- Hezekiah's TunnelThe pool at the tunnel's end · Hezekiah's TunnelOpen
Also in this chapter
How sure can we be?
- Strongly supported
Kings and Chronicles say Hezekiah brought the water into the city; a Hebrew inscription in the tunnel tells how the hewers met.
- Strongly supported
Kings says Hezekiah “made a pool, and a conduit”; Isaiah tells of a reservoir between the two walls.
- Strongly supported
Kings and Chronicles say Hezekiah stopped the springs outside the city and brought the water in; Isaiah speaks of a reservoir between the two walls.
- Strongly supported
Kings says Hezekiah “made a pool, and a conduit”; Nehemiah names “the pool of Siloah by the king’s garden”.
- Strongly supported
"A pool, and a conduit": which tunnel?: Kings says Hezekiah made "a pool, and a conduit" (和合本: 挖池、挖溝); Chronicles that he stopped the upper spring of the Gihon and brought the water down to the west of the City of David. Neither names this tunnel or gives its length; the identification rests on the course of the tunnel, the Siloam inscription and the radiometric dates.