Kidron Valley from south shows City of David excavations

Jerusalem’s Old City is bordered on its southern and eastern sides by two valleys. The Hinnom is on the south and the Kidron is on the east. The Kidron separates the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives. David had to cross the Kidron when he was fleeing from Absalom. (2 Samuel 15:23). Josiah desecrated pagan altars in the Hinnom and threw pagan items from the Temple Mount into the Kidron (2 Kings 23:4-7, 10). Jesus crossed the Kidron on his way to Gethsemane (John 18:1). Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones may well have had its founding in the disaster Jerusalem had known when the Babylonians had destroyed the city and killed many of its inhabitants. Dead bodies may well have been tossed in either valley. Tombs mark the hills in both valleys, especially on the Mt. of Olives just east of the Kidron. The yellow outline marks today’s Old City. The red outline marks the Jerusalem David knew. Nehemiah surveyed the broken walls of Jerusalem by walking the Kidron and the Central valleys. The Central Valley no longer exists, but it lay between the Kidron and Hinnom in ancient times. A few years before Jesus was born, Herod the Great had the valley filled in as he carried out an extensive remodeling of Jerusalem. Flash floods during the rainy season have kept people from building in both valleys. They are one of the few areas where we can clearly see what people in the Bible saw.