Jerusalem

יְרוּשָׁלִַם

David took the stronghold of Zion from the Jebusites. Solomon built the Temple on the hill above it. The Babylonians burned it all.

By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker

Site today

The City of David ridge and the Temple Mount

How sure

Certain The name, the sources and the finds all agree.

Other names

Salem, Jebus, Zion, City of David, Aelia Capitolina, Urusalim, Amarna letters

Location

31.7748° N, 35.2355° E (Google Maps)

How we know where it was

Jerusalem never lost its name. Egyptian letters from the 14th century BCE, the Amarna letters, already call it Urusalim. But David's city is not the walled Old City you see today. It was a narrow ridge running south from the Temple Mount, beside the Gihon Spring, the one spring in the area that never runs dry. On that ridge excavators found Hezekiah's tunnel, cut through the rock to bring the Gihon's water inside the walls, with an inscription about its digging. They found clay seal impressions naming officials known from the book of Jeremiah. And they found burnt rooms with arrowheads from the Babylonian destruction.

I walked that ridge from bottom to top for the Walking Tanach episode Jerusalem Between Heaven and Hell, and the slope itself is the lesson. One reading of Yerushalayim is yirah shalem, complete awe. At the bottom lies the Ben Hinnom Valley. In the book of Joshua it is just a landmark on Judah's border. But it became the city's dump, where garbage was piled and burned, and where the poor and the stranger were buried in shallow graves. Jeremiah places the Tophet there, where some Judeans sacrificed their children to Molech, out of sight of the city. Smoke, rot and screams. That is how the valley's name, Gehinnom, came to mean the suffering of the soul after death. Today it's a beautiful green valley.

At the top stands the Temple Mount, the Gate of Heaven. Jerusalem is the ladder between the two.

Climb it. From Givat HaTanach, Bible Hill, you stand on bare bedrock, the line of the ancient road that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David would have walked. At the foot of the City of David is the Pool of Siloam. From Hezekiah's time through the Second Temple it was the city's main water source and its mikveh, the ritual bath, where pilgrims immersed before going up. At the top are the southern steps and the blocked Hulda Gates. Every Jewish pilgrim walked through there, on the same stones. For centuries that spot and the Mercy Gate were where Jews came to pray. The Western Wall became central only in the last five hundred years or so.

The Tanach calls the Temple G-d's footstool, "the place of the soles of My feet." That is why pilgrimage is aliyah la-regel. It doesn't mean going up on foot. You ascend to the foot. Pilgrims entered the Temple courts on the right, circled, and left by the opposite gate.

Those blocked gates are the exile in stone. My heart skips a beat when I think of them opening again, for a Temple that will be a house of prayer for all nations.

Watch: Jerusalem Between Heaven and Hell

Walking Tanach. Walks from the Ben Hinnom Valley up through the City of David to the Temple Mount's southern steps.

See Jerusalem on the interactive map →

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Nearby places

• Nob 4 km north
• Nephtoah 4 km northwest
• Anathoth 5 km northeast
• Gibeah of Saul 5 km north
• Mozah (Motza) 7 km west
• Ramah (Ramathaim Zophim) 8 km north