Nehemiah 3:15
The pool of Shelah, or the shearing pool
Shallun builds "the wall of the pool of Shelah by the king's garden." The Vulgate and KJV make it the pool of Siloah/Siloam; the library's Greek (Giguet) reads it as "the pool where fleeces are washed at the king's shearing."
Same letters, different readings: the consonants agree, but ancient readers vocalized or interpreted them differently
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Every witness, in order
Memoir c. 430 BC; book compiled c. 400–300 BC (debated)
Original Ezra–Nehemiah
No original survives. No Qumran fragment of Nehemiah has been identified.
Translated c. 2nd century BC or later
Greek 2 Esdras 11–23 (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
le mur de la piscine où on lave les toisons lors de la tonte du roi
the wall of the pool where they wash fleeces at the king's shearing
Shelah read as a word for shearing or fleece. Greek 2 Esdras via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate (2 Esdras = Nehemiah)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
muros piscinæ Siloë in hortum regis
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
וְאֵת חוֹמַת בְּרֵכַת הַשֶּׁלַח לְגַן־הַמֶּלֶךְ
and the wall of the pool of Shelah (the conduit) by the king's garden
Shelah "sent, conduit"; compare Isaiah 8:6, "the waters of Shiloah that go softly."
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
the wall of the pool of Siloah by the king's garden
What changed, and why
The name points to the channel or tunnel bringing Gihon water south (the Iron Age Siloam tunnel). The large stepped pool found in 2004 dates to the Second Temple period, and the older Birket el-Hamra lies nearby. Nehemiah's pool cannot be identified with a specific excavated pool.
What the evidence shows
- The library's Greek does not read the name Shelah/Siloam here. Via Giguet's French.
- The excavated stepped Pool of Siloam is Nehemiah's pool.
Sources
Related lessons
- Builders, Daughters, Artisans and Gates →Nehemiah 3 lists who built each section of the wall, gate by gate, around the city: the high priest and priests, men of towns from Jericho to Beth-zur, district rulers, goldsmiths, perfumers, merchants, Levites, temple servants, and Shallum "he and his daughters." The nobles of Tekoa refuse. The list is a precious record of the community, and the hardest text to map.
- Investigation: Did Archaeologists Find Nehemiah's Wall? →In 2007 Eilat Mazar announced that a wall section and tower on the City of David's eastern slope belonged to Nehemiah's rebuilding, dated by pottery in the fill beneath. Israel Finkelstein and others argued that the structure is Hellenistic or Hasmonean, and that Persian-period Jerusalem was too small for a wall the length of Nehemiah 3. Recent analyses reopen the question. No structure has been securely identified as Nehemiah's wall.