King David's Tomb: Part 1 -- Finding It

So in archaeology the Bible can be used like a treasure map. How do you know if you got a reliable treasure map? You follow the map to where X marks the spot, you dig a hole, if you find a treasure, that's a reliable treasure map. In 1913 a man named Raymond Weil was the first Jewish archaeologist to excavate in the most ancient part of Jerusalem and it was significant that he was both an archaeologist and Jewish. As an archaeologist he knew how to dig and because he was Jewish he used the in his quest to find the tomb of King David. On October 24th 1913 Raymond Weil arrived in Jerusalem. This was when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire and one of the first things that he did is he made a map of Jerusalem and on it he indicated the location of the most ancient part of Jerusalem which is the city of David. So how did Raymond Weil then use the Bible as a treasure map? Well he used two verses in particular. The first one that he used was 1 Kings 2.10 which says, Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the city of David. So Raymond Weil knew if he was going to find the tomb of King David it was going to be somewhere within this 11 acre area that had been determined through archaeology was the city of David. He didn't have to worry about the rest of the city. The other verse that he used was Nehemiah chapter 3. Nehemiah 3.15-16 says, Shalun repaired the wall of the pool of Siloam by the king's garden as far as the steps going down from the city of David. Beyond him Nehemiah son of Asbuk made repairs up to the point opposite of the tombs of David. Nehemiah is leading the rebuilding of the city wall of the city of David. And it's clear that when you follow the descriptions of Nehemiah that in chapter 3 he's moving from the southern end on the east side of the city of David and he's describing the sections of walls that are being built and who's building them as you move north. And so Raymond Weil was brilliant. He went to that southwestern side. There was a pool, an ancient pool there which later would be determined to be the pool of Siloam. He found the wall that was being rebuilt at the time of Nehemiah. He followed it to the north and he determined okay somewhere around here would end the first section and then this would be the second section and he came to a patch of wall and so he estimated that somewhere opposite this wall would be the tombs of the house of David and he put a red X right there according to the Bible. And that's where he concentrated his digging. Raymond Weil began to excavate that area beginning in January of 1914. He went into the local village there of Siloam. He hired 200 men to do the digging and 30 donkeys. And in his excavation report he wrote that the donkeys serve to transport the earth which we are obliged to dispose in large heaps outside the excavation area. And I took an aerial photograph of this area. If you're looking at the aerial photograph from the side you see when we zoom in and you see the entrance to what he called tomb four and then this entrance to tomb four can be lined up with the old picture from his excavations to see exactly where these heaps these giant heaps of earth are piled around. Back in these early days I mean they moved dirt all the way down to bedrock and I should say this that you know he determined where the X was and that's where he concentrated his dig but he enlarged that area so that for sure the tombs of the house of David would be within this huge area that he was excavating when they dug there all the way down to bedrock. What did they find. And I cover this in my book where God came down the archaeological evidence. And so I'll just read some quotes from from Raymond Weil himself. Weil says we discovered and have completely cleared what remains of a group of large tombs cut in horizontal galleries. The location of the group in the old city and adjoining the enclosure wall corresponds perfectly to the few particulars that we have mainly from Nehemiah about the situation of the Davidic necropolis. These funeral deposits are certainly from the Judean royal period. Okay I'm standing up in the area that Raymond Weil excavated and down to bedrock and here we have exposed the city wall that he excavated. And just inside of it are these nine chambers that Raymond Weil found. So if you have a treasure map and you go to the X and you dig and you find a treasure that's a reliable treasure map. If the Bible says go here and this is what you're going to find if you dig right here and you dig right there and that's what you find that's a reliable ancient source. So one reality is if you look at the pictures of this area and these tombs if you go and visit the place for yourself that you'll see that these chambers that he found were greatly damaged. This is common in archaeology especially in a site like Jerusalem that's been occupied as a city for centuries after century after century because these earlier most ancient periods get damaged as the city is rebuilt over and over again. And that's what happened to these tombs that Raymond Weil found in a later period in the late Roman period under the Emperor Hadrian. The city had laid in ruins since its destruction by the Romans in A.D. 70 and he started rebuilding it around A.D. 135 and in so doing the stones were being cut from around the city and in this particular area there was a quarry and so by these stones being cut then they were greatly damaged. Look at all the quarrying that was done and then up here you see this one all this quarrying in this area. Here's another stone that's left in place that was being quarried. So in this area we see all these footprints of chambers that were here that were greatly damaged during the quarrying. If you look down here you see one of these chambers. Many of them only had the footprint remaining but you could determine how they were cut into the rock and the entrance and fortunately the tomb that was the best preserved was also the tomb that was the most monumental of the group and this is the one that Raymond Weil called T1, Tomb 1. So in his report Weil says, I'm a terrible drawer so bear with me but I'm hoping that this will help you understand. So in this area you had in ancient times a bedrock. An entrance was made here and then from that a big chamber with its ceiling that went back like this and then from the floor like this and then it had an upper part to it like this and then in the back of that upper part of the chamber was carved out this trough which is what Raymond Weil is calling the sarcophagus. In other words the purpose for this at the back of this chamber and the upper part of it was for placing the body of the deceased in this tomb. And so then what happened in later times and so when they cut out these stones like this for this new city then it eventually got down to the ceiling of where this chamber was and so it opened up the top of this chamber and this bottom part to the sky. So today there's no bedrock up here it's open to the sky here but that's not the way it looked in ancient times in the way that it was originally used. So you have to use your imagination. You cover up where it's been opened up to the open air and you understand that this is a horizontal chamber originally that went into the bedrock it had an upper deck and at the bottom of that upper deck and the back of that upper deck was the sarcophagus. And here is the tomb. We're going to go through the entrance to the tomb and then into the first chamber and then up this makeshift ladder into the back of the tomb and this is the sarcophagus that Raymond Weil was talking about excavating where the body would have been laid. How this worked it's not very long but in these ancient times the way that people were buried is they were buried in a curled up position like this. Now this is a unique type of tomb because most tombs were family tombs and so they were used generationally to bury a number of individuals who died over generations in a family and were buried in a tomb. The tombs that Raymond Weil found were unique in that they were for the burial of a single individual which which is described in the Bible because the Bible says that in an Israelite city it's not kosher it's not clean to bury Israelites within the city you don't have cemeteries inside the city you have them outside of the city. The exception in scripture for that is the burial of kings in their capital cities. He identified this carved out trough this sarcophagus as being the most probable place that once contained the bones of King David. But when I have a group at this tomb then really the scripture to focus on is a Psalm of David Psalm 16. This is the most probable place where David's bones rested. Now let's consider Psalm 16 in that context verses 9 through 11. Here David who is writing of the Messiah says this, Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest secure because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead nor will you let your faithful one see decay. Is David talking about himself? He's not talking about himself. Did David's body suffer decay? Absolutely it did. We don't even know where it is. We don't know where his bones are. God told him right before he made him the promise you're going to die. You're going to be buried. Your body is going to suffer decay. He's not talking about himself. You make known to me the path of life. Who's he talking about? He's talking about the Messiah whose title would be the son of David. Who would die be buried in a tomb but whose body would not decay. Why didn't his body decay? Because he rose from the dead on the third day. David was buried here in the hope of his offspring who would come who would not decay in the gray rise from the dead. The one who rose from the dead is also the one who will raise David bodily from the dead. So at this point we'll end part one. In part two I really want you to watch part two because in part two we're going to consider what the New Testament has to say about King David's tomb. And then we're also going to deal with why this great discovery was made and yet the reality is today that hardly anybody visits the tomb of King David that Raymond Weil found back in 1914.