the transverse wall in the same valley above. Through a gate in this wall the Pool of Siloam would be conveniently reached from the Suburb; and this would be the "Gate between two walls," through which Zedekiah fled away (2 Kings, xxv. 4; Jer. xxxix. 4; lii. 7). The wall was by the king's garden (le = by or near). Shallun pursues his work along the transverse wall eastward "unto (ad) the Stairs (maaloth) that go down from the City of David." So the City of David includes Ophel, and the Stairs descend the Ophel slope westward into the bed of the Tyropœan.
Verse 16, "After him repaired Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, unto the place over against (neged = in front of) the sepulchres of David." The wall of the Pool of Shelah was an offshoot from the wall of the High Town, so the writer returns and continues his description of the wall of the High Town. Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, takes up the repairs at the Fountain Gate and works northward. He comes over against the royal sepulchres, which are therefore on the Ophel side of the Tyropœon, a little north of the Stairs. The entrance would have to be low down in the valley bed to be outside the wall which protects Ophel on the west; but there is no reason why it should not be low down. The only doubt we need have is whether the spot marked in the plan is quite far enough north. In either case the excavations for royal tombs were so extensive as at length to approach the south wall of the Temple, perhaps even to touch the wall (at a point now under the mosque El Eksa). This is complained of by the prophet Ezekiel as a desecration. "The house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, and by the carcases of their kings in their death; in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and their door-post beside my door-post, and there was but the wall between me and them" (Ezek. xliii. 7, 8).
