called “the House of Heroes,” turning again north along the east side of the Ophel spur, at the “going up of the Armoury,” or otherwise of the “junction.” For the wall ran up-hill all the way to the Temple from this point. The line thus traced is the same that Josephus describes in later times, excluding, but yet defending, the Pool of Siloam. As regards the stairs, it is possible that we have another allusion to them where the “going down to Silla” (or “the stairway”) is connected with the “house of Millo,” probably a building in the lower city. We also read of a “causeway of going up” (more correctly an “ascent of steps”) in connection with the west gate of the Temple, but this may have been a distinct flight.[170] [Sidenote: THE OPHEL WALL] On the Ophel spur the east wall, south of the Temple, had another “turning” close to the palace or “king’s high house,” and a projecting tower near the “Water Gate” which--as explained already--must have been above the Kidron spring.[171] It ran north-east, on the line already noticed as fortified by Manasseh, to the “Horse Gate” which was at a corner. This part was called especially “the wall of the Ophel,” a term which does not signify a “tower” but a “mound,” such as ancient cities were built on, and a “place,” as Josephus calls it later, where were the houses of the Nethinim.[172] The rest of the course, on the east side of the Temple, is briefly described from the “Gate of the Muster” (Miphkad), or “of the Guard” (the “Prison” Gate), to the “going up of the corner” at the north-east angle of Jerusalem, and thus to the “Sheep Gate” where the description begins.[173] Jerusalem thus described was a city of about 200 acres--that is, of the same size as the modern town within the walls, but extending farther south and less far to the north. The account above given places each of the main gates on a main road still existing. The gate on the line of the stairs from the city of David is not named in the book of Nehemiah, but it is clearly the “gate between the two walls by the king’s garden,” which we have already seen to be the one by which Zedekiah fled down the Kidron Valley to Jericho. The “two walls” were the two flanks of the city wall, which defended the Pool of Siloah (lying outside the city) on the west and on the north-east. Such was the Jerusalem not only of Nehemiah but of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, and with this description we close the account of the Hebrew city: for after the departure of Nehemiah, in 433 B. C., we have no further notice of Jerusalem during about two centuries and a half of Jewish history. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV [150] This term _elah_ (or _elohi_) _hash-shemim_ is distinctive of the age after the return from the captivity (Ezra v. 11, vi. 9, 10, vii. 12, 21, 23; Neh. i. 4, 5, ii. 4, 20; Dan. ii. 18, 19, 28, 37, 44); it never occurs in any of those passages in the Pentateuch which some critical writers assign to this later age.