Bible Synapse
Broad Wall
Site · 8th century BC · Assyria and Babylon · also called Broad Wall (Jerusalem), Hezekiah’s Wall
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 8th century BC (the building of the wall)
- Found
- Jewish Quarter, Old City of Jerusalem. Uncovered by Nahman Avigad in the Jewish Quarter excavations that began in 1969; it can be seen below street level in a small plaza.
- Now
- At the site (Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem), Jerusalem
- Passages
- Isaiah 22:9–11, 2 Chronicles 32:5, Nehemiah 3:8
What it is
The foundations of a massive city wall, about 7 metres thick, exposed for some tens of metres below a plaza in the Jewish Quarter. Part of it stands on bedrock and part over houses that had been built not long before. It showed that by the late 8th century BC Jerusalem had spread from the City of David onto the western hill.
How it connects to the Bible
Avigad linked the wall with Hezekiah’s defences against Sennacherib. Isaiah rebukes Jerusalem because “the houses have ye broken down to fortify the wall” (Isaiah 22:10), and Chronicles says Hezekiah built “another wall without” (2 Chronicles 32:5). Its modern name comes from “the broad wall” that Nehemiah’s builders reached (Nehemiah 3:8), and some scholars identify the two.
What scholars debate
A radiocarbon study of Iron Age Jerusalem published in 2024, based on samples from the City of David rather than from this wall, led its authors to date the city’s main fortifications, apparently including this wall, decades earlier, to the reign of Uzziah, and to place the start of the city’s westward growth in the 9th century BC. Its link with Hezekiah is therefore debated.