Ezekiel's Jerusalem

In Ezekiel’s day—early 500s B.C., before the Babylonian destruction—Jerusalem was still a fortified hill city, proud and crowded within its limestone walls. It sat astride several ridges, most notably the narrow spine known as the City of David, descending south from the Temple Mount. The city’s defenses wrapped around steep slopes that fell sharply to the Kidron Valley on the east and the Hinnom on the west, natural moats that made Jerusalem a stronghold even before Solomon’s builders had raised its massive retaining walls and towers.

Temple dominates skyline

At the northern edge stood the Temple Mount, a broad, elevated platform supported by great stone foundations. There Solomon’s Temple gleamed—paneled with cedar, overlaid with gold, surrounded by courtyards, storerooms, and priests’ quarters. The Temple compound dominated the skyline, a symbol of divine presence and national pride. To the south lay the royal quarter and administrative buildings, and still farther down the ridge, the older quarter of the City of David, its stepped streets crowded with flat-roofed homes of stone and mudbrick.

Water from the Gihon Spring was channeled through Hezekiah’s tunnel into the Pool of Siloam at the southern tip of the city. Vendors filled the market areas near the gates, and pilgrims streamed toward the Temple courts. From the Mount of Olives across the Kidron, a traveler could see the city shining in the sun, a fortress of faith and stone. Yet even then, cracks had begun to show—not in the walls, but in the nation’s soul—foreshadowing the siege and exile that Ezekiel himself endured.