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 prey. The Assyrian officers pitched their camp at the north-west of the city, on the high ground, which was ever after known as the "Camp of the Assyrians." But, seeing the strength of the city, they made no assault upon it; they sought a conference with Hezekiah to induce him to surrender. Learning where his palace was, that is, David's house, on the slope of Ophel, they came and "stood at the passage of the upper pool, which is at the staircase of the Fuller's Field" (2 Kings xviii. 17). There they called to the king, and when Hezekiah, consulting his dignity, deputed his Prime Minister, his Secretary, and his Recorder to represent him, these officers spoke from the top of the wall. The circumstances may seem to require that the wall should extend a little more southward than the wall found by Warren, but they seem to be good evidence that the Ophel shaft was outside the wall, and that the king's house was within shouting distance of the shaft, or at any rate that the Assyrian generals thought so.

Jerusalem was not taken at this time; but in expectation of a siege, Hezekiah had made great defensive preparations. For one thing he gathered many labourers and choked up all the fountains outside the city and stopped the flow of the brook (2 Chron. xxxii. 3). He stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon and brought them straight down on the west side of the City of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30). He gathered together the waters of the lower pool; he made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool; he made a pool and a conduit and brought water into the city (Isaiah xxii. 9, 11; 2 Kings xx. 20). It is probable that most of these statements relate to the same piece of work, and that work the making of Siloam Pool and the tunnel to bring water to it from the Virgin's Fountain. There had been an "old pool" of Siloam, which is clearly traceable south-east of the present one, and this was the "lower pool of Gihon;" while the Virgin's Fount