POOL in the A. V. is the rendering of three Hebrew words.
1. 0),..; (Is. xiv. 23 ; xxxv. 7 ; xli. 18 ; xlii.
T T 15). See POND.
2. probably from to bend the -., knee,' an artificial tank or cistern at which camels kneel to drink • LXX. Kphp7), KoXv,up7j0pa ; once Cant. vii. 4, Vulg. piscina ; once Neh. ii. 14, aqumductus.' Akin to the Arabic Birkeh ' and its Spanish form ' Al-berca."Berechah' in the O. T. stands for the larger reservoirs of rain or spring-water; while 'B'or," cistern,' is used for the smaller domestic tanks, of which every house had one or more. The importance of these reservoirs in a country possessing scarcely more than one perennial stream, and where wells are few and in considerable, can hardly be estimated by those ac customed to an unfailing abundance of the precious fluid. In Jer. xiv. 3 we have a powerful descrip tion of the disappointment caused by the failure of the water in the cisterns (ns= ; A. V. pits,' cf.
Is. xlii. 15 ; Jer. ii. 13). The word is used of the large public reservoirs, corresponding to the tanks of India, belonging to the towns of Gibeon (2 Sam. ii. 13), Hebron (iv. 12), Samaria (t Kings xxii. 38), and Jerusalem ; the upper pool,' 2 Kings xviii. 17 ; Is. vii. 3 ; xxxvi. 2 (now the Birket
Mamilla') ; the lower pool,' Is. xxii, 9, I I (` Bir ket es Sultan ') ; Hezekiah's pool,' 2 Kings xx. 20 (` Birk& el-Hammam ') ; the king's pool,' Neh. ii. 14 (' the Fountain of the Virgin ') ; and 'the pool of Siloah,' Neh. iii. 15, or the old pool,' Is. xxii. 11 ('Birket Silwan '). We read also, Eccles. ii. 6, of the pools' or cisterns made by Solomon to irrigate his gardens. These are doubt less the famous Solomon's pools' near Bethlehem, now called el-Burak," the tanks.' They are de scribed as three immense tanks, partly excavated in the rocky bed of the valley, partly built up with huge stones, the bottoin of the upper pool being above the top of the next, and so with the second and third. Their dimensions are respectively— length, 380, 423, 582 feet ; breadth, east end, 236, 236, 207 ; west end, 229, 229, 148 ; depth, east end, 25, 39, 5o feet. An aqueduct leads from them, which terminates in the area of the Harem, the site of the Temple.
The pools of Bethesda and Siloam, xoXtvi3Opa, are mentioned in the N. T. (John v. 2, 4, 7 ; ix.