A common accusation by some of Israel’s neighbors and protesters in the U.S. is that Israel today is guilty of occupying the Palestinians’ homeland. As recently as 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved a resolution that Jerusalem is indeed significant – but only to Islam, not to Israel. According to the declaration, Palestinians are the only true indigenous people. UNESCO’s position is that the Old Testament is not historical, and that the Jews had no ancestral connection with the Holy Land or an ancient Israel. The resolution maintained that there never was a Jewish kingdom under a real king David a thousand years before Jesus Christ came. Thus, the Jews had no rights to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and Palestine. They were an “occupying power” – in other words “colonialists.”
Let Ancient Israel’s Stones Speak
Recent excavations in Jerusalem are dealing a fatal blow to the rampant propaganda and historical revisionism which denies that the Jewish people have been indigenous to the land for more than 3,800 years. These discoveries are also reaffirming the historicity of the Bible and a real ancient Israel.
The focus has been on the relatively recent discovery just south of the Old City of Jerusalem, where lies an older site known as the City of David. It is outside of the Old City wall just south of the Temple Mount. It had been mostly buried, protected, and forgotten for nearly 2,000 years – until now. In this short feature I will highlight some key discoveries in the excavation of the City of David.
View looking north at the City of David (I.e. the old ancient core of Jerusalem). Below the two domes is the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem. Sloping down, in the direction of the viewer is a long sunlit area which is the Old Ancient Core of Jerusalem – the city which David captured. This is bounded on the left (west) by the paved road that basically follows the line of the “Central Valley” (in ancient times, some sixty feet below the current ground level). The steep, grassy slope descends into the Kidron Valley, toward the paved road on the right (east) side of the image.
1. The Siloam Inscription / Hezekiah’s Tunnel
The Bible says that in the eighth century B.C., King Hezekiah constructed a tunnel through the mountain from the eastern Gihon Spring to a pool on the southwest corner of the City of David (2 Chronicles 32:30). A stone tablet embedded in the tunnel wall had a detailed description of the construction process. It has been dated to the First Temple Period in about the eighth century B.C., confirming both the biblical history and the Jewish presence in Jerusalem that long ago.
2. The [Real] Pool of Siloam
A pool by this name was built in the fifth century A.D. but the original had never been located. During an excavation, a tractor loader suddenly surfaced a piece of limestone staircase. Hand excavation took over, revealing an astounding 180-feet-wide, and sixteen-step staircase. It led down to a larger than an Olympic-sized pool which the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) dated to the eighth century B.C. The “waters of Shiloah” (Isaiah 8:6) and the “Pool of Shelah” (Nehemiah 3:15) are understood to be the same location as the Pool of Siloam, affirming the historicity of ancient Israel in the Old Testament and the presence of Jews in Jerusalem.
The area of the northern edge of the Pool of Siloam. The pool itself is on the far right (south) of the image.
3. Royal Seal of Yahuchal
In 2005, an incredibly rare royal clay seal from the sixth century B.C. was found at the excavation of the City of David. The inscription, written in paleo-Hebrew, read, “Yehuchal, the son of Shelemiah.” That matches one of the officers of king Zedekiah who tried to kill the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:1). This is proof that the Bible is not a book of fairy tales but documents real people and real history of the ancestry of Judaism in the Holy Land.
4. Golden Bell
Exodus 28:34 describes God’s instruction for making the robe of the High Priest. The hem was to be lined with small gold bells with a chime inside. None had ever been found to document it. One laid dormant for 2,000 years in the City of David until it was found recently – with the chime still inside and working! Another verification.
5. Pilgrimage Road
I have already mentioned the Pool of Siloam – but why so large if it was primarily to provide drinking water for the city? It is thought it was actually built to serve the tens of thousands of pilgrims needing ceremonial cleansing before going to the Temple. This purpose became evident when a portion of a road became visible leading north from the pool. While much of the road is under forty or more feet of dirt and family homes, it has now been verified to run along the entire west side of the City of David to the Western Wall of the Temple. It was used by the Jews in ancient Israel for centuries, documenting again their priority in the land of the Bible. It is referred to as the Pilgrimage Road and will be excavated as a tunnel and opened to the public in the future.
6. Tel Dan Inscription
Since archeology had never found documented evidence outside the Bible that David actually existed, many posited that he was merely a mythic legend. That ended in 1993, when an inscription was uncovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel. It was likely from King Hazael of Aram-Damascus who was celebrating a victory over the “King of the House of David.” It is dated from the ninth century B.C., less than a century after king David and Solomon reigned. “House” indicates a dynasty that was still flourishing.
Tel Dan stele on display at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The highlighted text says, “I killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin-] g of the House of David.” (Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)
Conclusion
A Jewish archaeologist, Dr. Eilat Mazar, confronted nay-sayers and anti-Semitic rioters regarding Israel’s claim to a 3,500-year history in Jerusalem and Palestine, challenged them to consider the evidence: “Let the stones speak, they will reveal the truth.”
This is only a fraction of that evidence. The provided source has a thorough discussion of the archaeological discoveries, and geopolitical and other factors as well. God has resurrected ancient Israel and the City of David as a testimony to the world in these last days that the Jewish people are uniquely indigenous to the Land of the Bible.
Source: When the Stones Speak, Doron Spielman. Center Street Publishers. 2025
