Stairs

The stairs that figure in UPDV are a fixed feature of post-exilic Jerusalem: a flight of steps connecting the city of David to the lower ground by the fountain gate. Both Nehemiah passages name the same structure.

The Stairs of the City of David

In the wall-rebuilding registry, the stairs mark the southern terminus of one repair section: "And the fountain gate repaired Shallun the son of Colhozeh, the ruler of the district of Mizpah; he built it, and covered it, and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars, and the wall of the pool of Shelah by the king's garden, even to the stairs that go down from the city of David" (Ne 3:15). The stairs are the landmark — the descending flight from the elevated city to the pool — by which the boundary of Shallun's work is described.

The same stairs reappear in the dedication of the wall, this time as the route a procession takes upward: "And by the fountain gate, and straight before them, they went up by the stairs of the city of David, at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David, even to the water gate eastward" (Ne 12:37). The descending flight of chapter 3 is the ascending flight of chapter 12 — used here as a public processional route, climbing past the house of David and on toward the water gate.