Hananeel

The tower of Hananel (UPDV's spelling for Hananeel) is a fortification at the northern stretch of Jerusalem's wall. It is named four times — twice in the wall-building and dedication accounts of Nehemiah, once in a Jeremianic promise of restoration, and once in Zechariah's vision of the city's future shape.

On the wall under Nehemiah

The tower stands near the sheep gate at the start of the wall-repair list: "Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the sheep gate; they sanctified it, and set up the doors of it; even to the tower of the Hundred they sanctified it, to the tower of Hananel" (Neh 3:1). Hananel and the tower of the Hundred mark the inner-end of the priests' work, the priests sanctifying their own stretch.

The tower returns in the wall-dedication procession, as the company circles back along the northern wall toward the temple: "and above the gate of Ephraim, and by the old gate, and by the fish gate, and the tower of Hananel, and the tower of the Hundred, even to the sheep gate: and they stood still in the gate of the guard" (Neh 12:39). The same two towers anchor the same stretch of wall.

A boundary-mark in restoration

Jeremiah uses Hananel as one corner of the rebuilt city. In a promise of Jerusalem's restoration to Yahweh: "Look, the days come, says Yahweh, that the city will be built to Yahweh from the tower of Hananel to the gate of the corner" (Jer 31:38). The tower marks one end of the city's northern reach.

Zechariah, looking further ahead, uses the tower the same way to mark out the city in its future, lifted-up shape: "All the land will be made like the Arabah, from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem; and she will be lifted up, and will dwell in her place, from Benjamin's gate to the place of the first gate, to the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananel to the king's wine-presses" (Zech 14:10). Hananel again stands as a fixed northern landmark by which the city's extent is measured.