DAVID, CITY OF (עִ֥יר דָּוִֽד, town [-quarter] of David [q.v.], i.e., beloved or uncle, K. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and OT, p. 85). The oldest, or SE, portion of Jerusalem, on the original Mt. Zion.

The City of David is equated with the מְצוּדָה֮, H5181, “place difficult of approach” (KB), “fortress,” of Zion (q.v.) (2 Sam 5:7). Such a mountain fortress at Jerusalem dated back to patriarchal and Canaanite days (Gen 14:18, Salem; cf. Ps 76:2). It occupied the approximately one-quarter m. of sharply sloped ridge between the Kidron Valley on the E and the Tyropoeon Valley on the W, to the N of their junction with the Hinnom Valley. The location was determined by the presence at its NE end, in the Kidron Valley, of the Gihon spring, which was the area’s only perennial source for water. Earlier excavators had limited the City of David to the crest, barely 100 yards wide from a gate on the W (Crowfoot, 1927) to a wall and towers on the E (Macalister, (1923-1926); but, while a Canaanite shaft had been cut out through the rock to the water of the spring, this would have left the top of the shaft outside the wall, some eighty ft. to its E, and undefendable. More recent archeologists have demonstrated that the main walls, from c. 1800 b.c. to the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 b.c., were fifty yards more nearly toward the bottom of the slope, with houses crowding the ascents (K. Kenyon [1961]).

This city David captured from the Jebusites in 1003 b.c. (2 Sam 5:7), renamed it after himself, and settled in it, making it his capital (v. 9). His subsequent building projects included a palace (1 Chron 15:1) and Millo [q.v.], lit., “a filling,” which may refer to massive 10th cent. retaining walls with which the previous system of Canaanite terraces on the slopes was strengthened (Kenyon, BA, 27 [1964], 43). David brought God’s Ark into his City of David (1 Chron 15:1, 29), where it remained until 959 b.c. and its removal by Solomon to the new Temple he had built for it on Mt. Moriah to the N (1 Kings 8:1; 2 Chron 5:2). Solomon seems also to have constructed an acropolis or palace area, with casemate walls, on the crest of the City of David (Kenyon, p. 41), though his palace for the daughter of Pharaoh was not there (1 Kings 9:24), but between Moriah and Zion (?), because of the holiness of these places as caused by the presence of the Ark (2 Chron 8:11).

Scripture notes the burial within the City of David of David himself (1 Kings (2:10), of Solomon (11:43), of most of the kings of Judah down to Jothan, d. 736 b.c. (2 Chron 12:16; 14:1; 16:14; 21:1, 20; 24:25; 27:9), and of other important figures such as Jehoiada the priest (24:16). Certain “barrel vaults,” now partly cut away, near the S end of the city may be their remains. King Hezekiah strengthened it before the Assyrian crisis of 701 b.c. (32:5) and brought water down its W side via his tunnel from Gihon (32:30) and thus included the Pool of Siloam and the King’s Garden at the southern tip within the walls (Neh 3:15; Isa 22:9-11). Babylon destroyed the city in 586 b.c.

Nehemiah’s refortification in 444 embraced only the crest of the City of David, the walls of Crowfoot and Macalister (Neh 3:15; 12:37). Later expansion was to the hill W of the Tyropoeon Valley, on which Josephus located (falsely) the “Tomb of David” (War, V, 4, 1) and to which, with the abandonment of the original City of David after a.d. 70, the name Zion was attached.

The NT speaks of Bethlehem as the πόλις Δαυίδ, “city of David” (Luke 2:11).

Bibliography J. Simons, Jerusalem in the OT (1952), 60-64; M. Avi-Yonah, Jerusalem (1960); K. Kenyon, “Excavation in Jerusalem,” BA, 27 (1964), 34-52.