JEHOSHAPHAT, VALLEY OF je hŏsh’ a făt (עֵ֖מֶק יְהֹֽושָׁפָ֑ט; LXX κοιλαδα Ιωσαφατ, meaning God shall judge, or Jehovah has judged). A valley adjacent to the city of Jerusalem on the E, long regarded as the place of the judging of the nations (Joel 3:2, 12). It is also referred to as the “valley of decision” (Joel 3:14). Zechariah 14:2 is commonly taken as a reference to this place, now known as the Valley of the Kidron.
Christian tradition made this identification at least as early as the 4th cent. a.d., perhaps beginning with the Bordeaux Pilgrim’s account. Both Eusebius and Jerome refer to the Valley of Jehoshaphat in the Onamasticon, though Eusebius calls it the Valley of Hinnom, while Jerome expressly speaks of the Kidron Valley, and uses the Joel 3:2, 12 reference. The concept of it as a place of final judgment is shared by Jewish, Moslem, and Christian tradition, and is witnessed to by the extensive cemeteries of all three faiths on the slopes of the valley. The pseudepigraphical book of 1 Enoch (53:1) places the judgment in a deep valley near Hinnom.
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The valley prob. was named after King Jehoshaphat, and also was known as the “King’s dale” (2 Sam 18:18), where Absalom erected a pillar, and prob. expected to be buried (the monument now called Absalom’s Tomb is of a later period, as are the adjacent Tomb of St. James, and Tomb of Zechariah). The Spring of Gihon, and Pool of Siloam, with the exits of Hezekiah’s (or Siloam) Tunnel, as well as the Spring of En-Rogel are to be seen, with some remnants of older water systems. The Garden of Gethsemane, with the nearby Basilica of the Agony, are located in the floor of the valley, and at the confluence of the Kidron with the Valley of Gehenna (OT Hinnom) there is the Potter’s Field.
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The theme of judgment is perpetuated in the names of the gates in the E wall of the city. Up to the 14th cent. the northern gate, now called the Damascus Gate, was currently designated as St. Stephen’s Gate, and since that time the name was transferred to the gate opening on the Kidron Valley, previously known as the Gate of the Valley of Josaphat. The Vul. identifies the Muster Gate (Miphkad = “the appointed place,” Neh 3:31) as Porto Judicialis, “Gate of Judgment.” A 6th cent. Laura (monastic center) was located near the gate, and a 12th cent. monastery nearby was called St. Mary of Josaphat, corresponding to the Arab. Bab Sitti Mariam. Moslem legends name the two closed portals of the Golden Gate the door of mercy and the door of contrition, continuing the judgment theme, and the part of the Kidron Valley opposite this gate is called by them the Djahannum (Gehenna).
Bibliography Bordeaux Pilgrim, a.d. 333 (tr. Stewart, p. 24), “Also as one goes from Jerusalem to the gate which is to the eastward, in order to ascend the Mount of Olives, is the valley called that of Josaphat.” (See also Geyer, Itin., p. 23); Eusebius and Jerome, Onamasticon, see under Cedron, Κεδρών, G3022, ed. Clericus, p. 52, 157, also edition Klostermann, 70, 119; E. Robinson and E. Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, Vol. I (1841), 396-405; J. Simons, Jerusalem in the Old Testament (1952), 10, 14; E. Kraeling, Rand McNally Bible Atlas (1956), 342.
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