Gihon
Gihon is a location mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Gihon Spring. It appears across 6 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
The Gihon Spring, the primary freshwater source of ancient Jerusalem, played a decisive role in the city's history throughout the biblical period. Located in the Kidron Valley on the eastern slope of the City of David, it is first mentioned in 1 Kings 1:33, 38, 45, when David commanded that his son Solomon be brought to Gihon to be anointed king, a ceremony performed by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet. The spring's sacred associations and its position outside the city walls made it an appropriate venue for this public coronation. Second Chronicles 32:30 records Hezekiah's remarkable engineering achievement: he 'stopped the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled the water down to the west side of the City of David,' constructing the famous Siloam Tunnel to bring water within the city's defenses in anticipation of the Assyrian siege under Sennacherib. Second Chronicles 33:14 notes Manasseh later built an outer wall near Gihon as part of his defensive fortifications. The spring thus sustained Jerusalem's inhabitants through centuries of siege and was integral to the city's identity as a place chosen and sustained by God.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The Gihon Spring remains active today in the Kidron Valley below the City of David, making it one of the most archaeologically significant water sources in the Near East. Excavations by Charles Warren in the nineteenth century and extensive modern work by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron have revealed a massive fortified water system dating to the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BC), including towers and a pool protecting access to the spring. Hezekiah's Siloam Tunnel, 533 meters of hand-cut rock channeling water from Gihon to the Pool of Siloam, has been explored since 1838 and confirmed by the Siloam Inscription, discovered in 1880, which describes the tunnel's construction in ancient Hebrew.
Verse Appearances (6)
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]