Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

KINGS GARDEN

Part of the Judean royal estate which would have also included lands, vineyards, olive groves, and vegetable plots in villages around Jerusalem. The location of this garden (Heb. gan hammeleḵ) is fairly certain: near the wall of the pool of Shelah (Siloam) in the Kidron Valley (Neh. 3:15), near “the gate between the two walls” (Jer. 39:4; 52:7). Excavations have revealed that this wall was part of the city wall which protected public access to the pool. Therefore the garden would have been outside this wall, probably covering the underground cistern that fed the pool and extending just south and east of the City of David across the mouth of the Tyropoeon Valley (Isa. 8:6). Terraced structures in this lower area of the city have been discovered, and even today this area holds sufficient depth of soil to be used for agriculture, being fed by surface run-off from the western side of the Kidron. Water from the well at the En-rogel spring, at the junction of the Kidron and Hinnom Valleys and dating in its lower parts to the 10th to 8th centuries b.c.e., must also have been used to water the King’s Garden. The garden played a role in the last days of the kingdom of Judah, serving as part of an escape route for King Zedekiah and his army fleeing the Babylonian siege (2 Kgs. 25:4 = Jer. 39:4).

Bibliography. W. H. Mare, The Archaeology of the Jerusalem Area (Grand Rapids, 1987); K. M. Kenyon, The Bible and Recent Archaeology (Atlanta, 1978).

J. Randall Price

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

KINGS GARDEN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)