The Waters of Shiloah

"For as much as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah’s son; now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth (will bring) up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks." (Isa.8:6‑7).

Deep down beneath Jerusalem there is a stratum of hard, impervious rock, sloping very gently towards the south‑east. All the rain that falls upon the city and percolates into the ground gathers at last upon that unyielding shelf and forms underground streams which emerge at length as springs upon the hillsides outside the city. By far the most important of these springs is that known as the Virgin’s Fountain, halfway down the steep sides of the valley of Jehoshaphat. This spring never fails; the underground reservoirs feed it constantly and from time immemorial it has formed Jerusalem’s most reliable water supply. The Jebusites, long before Joshua invaded the Promised Land with his hosts, had bored a tunnel from the fountain into the mountainous mass upon which their stronghold was built and had then made a vertical shaft to the surface so that they could descend and draw water in times of siege without having to venture outside their walls. In much later times the Israelites—probably in the period between David and Ahaz — had built a covered aqueduct just under the ground to convey the water from the Virgin’s Fountain to the Pool of Siloam, with the same purpose in mind. When Sennacherib invaded Judah in the reign of Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, it would seem that this aqueduct had been blocked up and knowledge of its course lost, for Hezekiah set to work and excavated another tunnel through the mountain to convey the water to the Pool of Siloam, which was by then inside the city walls. In our days both Hezekiah’s tunnel and the remains of the earlier aqueduct have been found, the latter buried far underneath the soil and rubbish which has accumulated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat since the days of Isaiah.

It was this lost aqueduct to which Isaiah referred in the text. That overflowing water coming out from the heart of the mountain below the city and the Temple, never failing, always fresh and clear, was a very real Divine provision for the people. It was a kind of literal counterpart of the spiritual provision—sustenance, refreshment, protection—which God had made for his chosen. Quietly, unobtrusively, safe from all attack by enemies, the waters of Shiloah "flowed softly" to meet the needs of dwellers in the city, and in just the same way God’s provision for his people was always there and always effective to meet all their needs and shield them from all harm, provided they would but exercise the faith necessary to avail themselves of its benefits.

But the people would not. They turned away from the gentle, pure, life‑giving stream and fastened their covetous eyes upon other waters, waters that were outwardly more spectacular and more pleasing to the natural senses; but waters that, had they but realised the fact, were not waters of life at all. They were waters which in the end brought trouble and disaster and death.

Away across the desert, in the land of Assyria, there was a mighty river. Men today call it the Tigris, but the Assyrians gave it a name which meant "shining water." They had built their capital city of Nineveh upon that river and from there had set out to conquer the world. The Assyrians are known chiefly to students of the Old Testament for their military skill and their ruthlessness, but they were also an industrious and an artistic people, and they had harnessed their great river so that it became the principal support of their economy. The river and its tributaries had been dammed at various places to create artificial lakes, great reservoirs which stored up the water that came down from the highland in abundance in springtime, when the winter snows melted. From these lakes they had cut canals, leading in every direction through the desert, and irrigated the soil so that it became one of the most fertile countries in the world. The children of Israel knew of this lovely country, so different from their own rugged, austere Judea—many of them visited Assyria as merchants and brought back tales of its grandeur; Jonah had preached in Nineveh only a century or so before Isaiah’s day—and as they compared the earthly beauty and the man‑made efficiency of that widespread network of rivers and canals with their own modest, quiet, hidden stream of Shiloah, they turned away from the living waters and gave preference to the waters of the great river. They forgot their own stream had never failed them and had always sufficed for their needs, and turned instead to embrace the appeal of a worldly creation, the continuance of which depended upon the will and the whim of imperfect men.

Today, the great dams are in ruins, the canals choked up with silt and sand, the onetime fertile fields returned to desert.[BBC report 21 September 22 “The River Tigris is all but disappearing”] The river, once alive with boats and teeming with activity, now winds sluggishly through marshes choked with reeds and rushes. The work of man has utterly failed and all the glories of yesterday have become as a fading flower. But the waters of Shiloah flow still, as abundantly and as fresh and pure as in the days of Isaiah. The women of Jerusalem still draw water from the Pool, and the gardens around the south‑east corner of the city are still watered from its overflow.

Assyria was the undoing of Israel eventually. Because the people had refused the waters of Shiloah, God told the prophet He himself would bring upon them the waters of the great river to overflow and submerge them in a great destruction. And so it came to pass. In the midst of their unbelief and wilfulness and apostasy the Assyrian hosts overran their land and took them away into captivity. Thus was fulfilled the word of the Lord "(I) bringeth up (will bring) upon them the waters of the river…even the king of Assyria, and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks." (v.7) That is always the fate of the people that turn away from the Lord’s guidance and leading and permits itself to be dazzled by the more spectacular attraction of worldly things and methods. Doubtless the scientifically arranged canals of Assyria were technically much more efficient in watering the land than the quietly flowing underground stream emerging from the rocky hillside outside Jerusalem, but those canals could only be kept in operation by a prodigious amount of labour, and when the labour failed, as all human effort and organisation must eventually fail, the wonderful channels with their sluice gates and regulators and mechanical contrivances quickly went out of action and the water ceased to flow and the land dried up and became a desert. The stream that was the river of God has always remained full of water and has always made glad the city of God. Jeremiah saw this very clearly, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he cried out aloud "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (Jer.2:13). How often, in the days that have passed since Jeremiah, have God’s people repeated that tragic mistake! And it is not as though there had been no warning, no entreaty. "O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments," comes the voice of the Most High, regretful, sad, pleading. "Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." (Isa.48:18). It is impossible not to see in that eloquent appeal the picture of the waters of Shiloah, flowing softly, quietly, steadily, surely, through their narrow channel, to supply all the needs of the people of God in the holy city. We may enjoy those waters, in a spiritual sense, if we but rely upon them and turn our backs upon the shining waters that have been gathered together and remain held together by the mind and power of man. David in the twenty‑third psalm sings of his being led by the Lord beside the still waters, where his soul became restored and where he found the quiet pathways of righteousness. Perhaps he too had followed the course of that crystal stream and seen in it a fit symbol of the Divine sustenance which he knew his soul needed.

This is a great truth, enshrined in this vivid picture. Divine provision for all our needs! The lesson is as necessary to us as it was to Israel after the flesh—perhaps more so, for we live in a day that offers far more in the way of distraction and attraction. There are more theories abroad, more subtle reasonings that tend to turn our minds away from the "truth as it is in Jesus." Especially is it so in this latter day, the day of the world’s trouble and world’s judgment, when the keenest and brightest of human minds are busy devising plans and schemes to restore the balance of the world without calling upon the aid of God, and the constantly deferred expectations of the "saints" tempt more than a few to give some ear to the alternatives suggested by man. Is that why the forty‑sixth Psalm, in the midst of its description of world judgment, reminds us once more of the river of God that will supply all our needs? "Though the earth be removed...though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar (rage) and be troubled (swell), though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof... " Yet, for all this.... "there is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." (vv.2‑4) In the midst of the din and clash of earth’s kingdoms, locked in deadly conflict, falling, and disintegrating into irretrievable ruin, the waters of Shiloah flow softly still, yielding refreshment and strength to all who continue to put their faith in them. "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." (Isa.30:15)

It is only to be expected that this Divine provision for the people of God should evoke a response of praise to God. That at any rate is the theme of the Psalmist’s words in the sixty‑fifth psalm. The whole psalm is one of praise. It opens with the well‑known words "Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: and unto thee shall the vow be performed" and in verses 9 and 10 the singer seems clearly to have brought the underground "river of God" into the scope of his song, "Thou visiteth the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water." Now this could be a poetic phrase with no intentional application to any particular river, just a rapturous acknowledgment of the blessings of rain and water wherewith the land could bring forth its increase. On the other hand, the expression "the river of God" is significant, and the phraseology of the next verse does seem to indicate that David had the waters of Shiloah very specially in mind when he composed this noble psalm. "Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof." (v.10) The word for "furrow" isgedud, meaning a man‑made channel or a mechanical excavation. It is used to describe the aqueducts which were made all over the land to convey the precious water without risking its loss by evaporation. "Settlest" means to descend, to go down or to deepen. There is the thought here of the life‑giving water descending or flowing down an excavation in the course of its beneficent work, an apt description of the stream from the Virgin’s Fountain flowing through the underground aqueduct to the Pool of Shiloah. In his joy at the continued providence of God thus manifested David cries "thou crownest the year with thy goodness...the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing." (vv.11,13) A continuous song of praise is pictured as rising to God from all things in the land, animate and inanimate, because the living water is flowing and does not fail.

In a spiritual sense our lives should be like that. In all our circumstances and in all our activities the background of praise should always be evident. We may not at all times see the river flowing; our ears may not continuously hear the murmur of its waters; the outward evidence of its presence may become for a while hard to discern or appreciate, but the river is always there. The waters of Shiloah will never fail, they can never fail, for they come forth from God. And while the waters flow our welfare is assured and we can—and should—continue to give praise to God. Like the sunlit valleys in David’s psalm, we can shout for joy; we can also sing!

Isaiah, too, rises to this high plain of praise for the blessings of the river of God, but true to his character he wants to bring all men into the picture and extend his view far beyond the Gospel Age and the Church, into the Messianic Age and the world of men. Neither has he yet finished with those Assyrian canals on which he poured such scorn previously, even though knowing, and declaring, that the great river would triumph temporarily over the river of God insofar as unfaithful Israel was concerned. But Isaiah knew that the great river would be rolled back and the river of God come into its own again, in due time, and by a bold reversal of imagery he sees the quiet waters of Shiloah expand and increase and invade the territory of the great river and reach, with its life‑giving waters, all the world.

"Look upon Zion" he cries "the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. But there the glorious LORD will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby." (Isa.33:20‑21). These "broad rivers and streams" are the ship canals and irrigation channels of Assyria, intersecting the level fields of that almost completely flat country in all directions, used both for agriculture and the transport of men and goods. Shipping of all kinds, from tiny coracles made of wickerwork and covered with bitumen, to boats capable of carrying a hundred tons of goods, crowded those waterways continually. Isaiah looked at all that in the spirit of his mind, then at the quiet little stream bubbling out of the hillside below the Temple, and said in effect "In that day when Jerusalem is pronounced holy to the Lord, He will cause those quiet waters of Shiloah to become great rivers and canals overspreading all the land and bringing life wheresoever they come. But there will be no ships"; the "galleys with oars" and "gallant ships" were the merchant vessels and the war vessels, for the Assyrians had battleships suited to their day and age; and Isaiah made it plain then and there that the evils of commercialism and militarism will have no place in that new land of living waters which the Lord God is to introduce when the "broken cisterns" of men have passed away.

The waters of Shiloah will not always flow in secret, hidden from sight, disesteemed of men and precious only in the sight of God and those who trust in God. Men will not always look to the shining waters of Assyria for their needs and put their trust in that which is man‑made to the ignoring of that which is God‑made. The waters of Shiloah will one day flow forth to meet the needs of all the world. It is Ezekiel who makes that so very plain. In his vision of the Millennial Temple he sees waters emerging from underneath the sanctuary, at the south side of the altar, flowing eastward and emerging again under the outer wall at the south side of the east gate. It is an interesting fact that the literal stream that has its source in some undiscovered subterranean recess deep down below the place where Solomon’s Temple stood does emerge below the city wall, halfway down the side of the valley, on the south of the Eastern Gate, from thence flowing into the Virgin’s Fountain and onward to the Pool of Siloam. Ezekiel’s description is really a poetic replica of the stream that actually exists at Jerusalem. It is impossible to avoid the thought that he had that well‑known stream in mind when he saw the vision. And he saw it going outward into the country, growing wider and deeper all the time, until at last as a mighty torrent it reached the eastern sea, the Dead Sea, and healed those salt laden waters so that they too became fresh and pure. "Every thing shall live whither the river cometh" he said. (Ezek.47:9). And as he looked, he saw trees, trees on both sides, growing rapidly and coming to maturity, evergreen trees whose leaves never faded and whose fruit was borne continually. That fruit, he said was to be for the food of man, and those leaves for medicine, for the healing of the nations, and the source of the virtue that resided in both fruit and leaves was the river of life in which the trees were rooted, a mighty flood that will encompass all the world and will reach every man, the waters of Shiloah, flowing out from the sanctuary, becoming a river of water of life to which all are invited to come, and of which all are urged to partake. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." (Rev.22:17).

The waters of Shiloah will flow to all eternity, for life can only be sustained by the continuing power of God. Through all the long cycles of the endless ages of glory, man will depend upon God for life and will look to him for life, and that life will come ceaselessly, surely, enduringly, out of the sanctuary where God dwells, and reach to the farthest bounds of his material creation. The waters will never cease, for man himself will never cease to be. In God, the Father of all, men will live, and move, and have their being.

AOH