source are unknown. May not some conduit have enabled the besieged garrison of the Akra fort to draw water from this source?
A few years ago the Rev. F W Birch, arguing on the supposition that it was the city on Ophel which Joab captured for David, suggested that he found his way into it by the secret tunnels and shafts from the Virgin's Fountain. That Ophel might be captured by surprise in that way seems likely; only it was not Ophel that Joab had to capture, but Akra. The Lower City had all been taken, except that the Akra held out still. If its garrison obtained water from the Hammam esh Shefa, may not Joab have effected an entrance from that spring? He did not have to get up to a "gutter," nor yet to a "water course," but to "reach them by the aqueduct" (B'Tzinnor).
David's flight and exile; the Spies.—David at first dwelt in the stronghold (the Akra fort), but we afterwards find references to a house which he had and which was on the Ophel slope. We have had evidence of this in the Book of Nehemiah, and we find confirmation in such passages as 1 Kings viii. 1-6, where the ark is brought up out of the City of David into the temple (and 2 Sam. xxiv. 18; 1 Kings ix. 24). When David decided to flee from Jerusalem because of the rebellion of Absalom, he would go down the stairs of the City of David, pass out by the Gate between two walls, and go through his own garden grounds; and then, as we are told, he passed over the Kedron, ascended Olivet, and went down to Jericho and over the Jordan.
But he left friends behind him at his house, and it was arranged that two sons of the priests should act as spies and bring him news (2 Sam. xvii.). They waited outside the city, at En Rogel, and a wench went and told them. En Rogel is now identified with the Virgin's Fountain; and it would not be a bad place for the spies to hide in,
