where Ezra spoke to the assembled people (Ezr 10:9), is identical with the open place before the water-gate mentioned Neh 8:1, Neh 8:3, Neh 8:16, places it on the east side of the temple area, near where the golden gate (Rab er Rahme) now stands. This identity, however, cannot be proved; and even if it could, it would by no means follow that this open space lay on the east side of the temple area. And as little does it follow from Neh 12:37, as we shall show when we reach this passage. היּוצא המּגדּל is said by Bertheau to have belonged perhaps to the water-gate towards the east, since, by reason of the statements contained in Neh 3:31 and Neh 3:32, we must not seek it so far northwards on the east side of the temple area, as to combine it with the remains of a tower projecting seven and a half feet from the line of wall at the north-east corner, and described by Robinson (Biblical Researches, p. 226). But even if the tower in question must not be identified with these remains, it by no means follows that it stood in the neighbourhood of the golden gate. Even Arnold, in his work already cited, p. 636, remarks, in opposition to Bertheau's view, that “it is evident from the whole statement that the tower standing out from the king's house, in Neh 3:25, Neh 3:26, and Neh 3:27, is one and the same, and that Bertheau's view of our having here three separate towers can hardly be maintained,” although he, as well as Bertheau, transposes both the king's house and the court of the prison to the south of the Temple area. The similar appellation of this tower as היּוצא in the three verses speaks so decidedly for its identity, that very forcible reasons must be adduced before the opposite view can be adopted. In Neh 3:26 it is not a locality near the water-gate in the east which is indicted by היּוצא המּגדּל, but the western boundary of the dwellings of the Nethinim lying opposite. They dwelt, that is, upon Ophel, southwards of the temple area, on a tract of land reaching from the water-gate in the east to opposite the outstanding tower of the royal citadel in the west, i.e., from the eastern slope of the ridge of Ophel down to the Tyropoean valley.
Verse 27
After them the Tekoites repaired a second piece from opposite the great tower that standeth out to
