My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies (Song of Songs 6:2-3).
This past Sunday morning we journeyed to The City of David, which is actually the Jerusalem of the Old Testament (despite the fact that it sits atop the Old City’s walls). 2 Samuel 5 speaks of David’s capture of the former Canaanite city (which was actually called Jerusalem prior to the Israelite invasion. David and his men entered the city through the water shaft, quickly took control of the Jebusite stronghold, and, eventually, David and his son, Solomon, transformed the city into the Israelite capital. Like most of modern day Jerusalem, The City of David sits on the slope of a hill, its highest point on the north end (where the Solomon would eventually construct the Temple). As one travels south (and downhill) they eventually find end up where the Hinnom and Kidron Valleys meet. Since the direction of water flow in Jerusalem moves in a southeasterly direction (water from rain runs south and east before eventually filling the Dead Sea), the southern point of The City of David inevitably saw the most water and was therefore the best agricultural land available…which means, the king’s got dibs.
Solomon planted a garden there (Ecc. 2:5) . And guess what? It’s still there…well, sort of
The spot believed to have been Solomon's Garden (City of David)
I realize that at this point, 3000 years later, it doesn’t look like much, but keep in mind the fact that it’s still winter. Allow the cats to stand as a reminder that Spring is but a whisper (or “wrestling match”) away.
Five years ago, the city of Jerusalem was repairing a road in the southern part of the City of David. The project ended no sooner than it had began. Here in Jerusalem, urban development and archeology are at constant odds. The city is basically a living, breathing limestone testimony to millenna past. Just below the surface lie civilizations stacked on top of each other like a club sandwich: Ottoman, Crusader, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, Persian, etc.
The road construction crew found something. Beneath the broken bits of asphalt lay a series of Roman era, limestone steps (see picture at the top). The steps appeared to lead down to a pool, which would make sense since water naturally drains down the hill (from where the Temple stood), south, and pool at the exact spot where the steps were found. Unfortunately, the archeological team faced three very significant problems:
1. Excavation of the pool would likely eliminate the spot now understood to be Solomon’s Garden (likely, the one in Song of Songs). Here’s what probably happened: Solomon planted a garden, it remained the king’s garden throughout the existence of Israel’s monarchy. When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., the garden was destroyed as well. When the exiles returned seventy years later (since there was no longer a king in Israel [they were under Persian rule]) a pool (instead of a garden) was built. The garden was built atop the pool centuries later. Which leads to our second problem
2. The pool found is The Pool of Siloam
As (Jesus) passed by, he saw a man blind from birth…he spat on the ground and made mud with saliva. then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam. So he went and washed and came back seeing.
You can’t have it both ways. Which Biblical site is more important: Solomon’s Garden or The Pool of Siloam? The Greek Orthodox Church (who actually owns the land the garden/pool sits on/is buried under) would likely opt for the later (since then it could charge visitors to see it). Simple? Not quite…
3. The land is leased (for life) to a Muslim guy who currently lives and gardens on the land. I’m sure he’d rather have it remain a garden. ‘Cause you can’t grow pomegranates out of limestone.
So what does one do? How do we make sense of the possibility of two biblical sites existing on the same spot, from a theological standpoint? One option is to assume that Jesus knew that the place He was sending the blind man to wash the holy spit-mud out of his eyes was the very place where Solomon’s Garden once stood, and then to assume that the blind man (and everyone watching) also knew about Solomon’s Garden.
It’s rather interesting to me that Jesus, having just passed outside of the Temple after thoroughly ticking off the religious folks, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out the temple.” (John 8:59). It’s on the way out that he meets the blind man. Blind men wouldn’t have been able to enter the Temple and so the steps leading into the threshold of the Temple Mount would have been the closest he could have come to the presence of God.
It seems to me that there had a be a reason why Jesus would send the blind man from the Temple steps all the way to The Pool of Siloam to wash the mud out of his eyes when there were a number of pools just outside the Temple (probably right next to where he and Jesus were standing) which were used for ritual cleansing. Why not spare the poor and (still) blind guy the bumps and bruises of having to walk all the way down the hill to Siloam? Unless if, perhaps, Jesus wanted to connect the two: His healing of the unclean beggar with the pursuit of the backwoods Shulammite woman in by Solomon within the confines of his garden.
The Apostle Paul provides grounds on which, I think, we can tread lightly allegorical:
Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such ting, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies….Therefore a man shall leave his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:22-28, 32).
The reality of God breaking into our fallen world, taking on flesh, walking with hurting, blind, and unclean beggars is akin to a king reaching out with the kind of dignity, honor and patience Solomon exemplifies towards a peasant woman–proving the force of his love.
This is exactly the sort of picture John paints for us in Revelation:
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb (think John 1) has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted for her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.’ (19:6-8).
We are all dirty beggars who have been met by a King in a garden, the mud-covered ones sent to Siloam to receive our healing. We are the bride, the ones for whom God would endure the scorn our sin’s consequence so that we might be clothed in white.
