In the context of the passages just quoted we find that Joash is carried “by the way of the Gate of the Guard into the king’s house.” This gate must, of course, have been on that side of the palace adjoining the Temple courts; it was probably due north of the Water Gate (_i.e._, the Triple Gate), and it thus again accords with Neh. iii. 25, where the tower standing out from Solomon’s house is said to be “by the court of the guard.” The court of the guard may very well have extended from the Water Gate without to the Gate of the Guard on the Temple side of the palace. From Neh. xii. 39, it appears that there was a corresponding Gate of the Guard at the corresponding point on the north side of the altar.
_The Assassination of Joash._ When Joash grew to man’s estate he made changes which displeased his people; and the short statement is that his slaves slew him on his bed, “at the House of Millo, that goeth down to Silla” (2 Kings xii. 20, combined with 2 Chron. xxiv. 25). This has been generally regarded as obscure, and some have supposed Silla to be the same as M’sillah, a stairway at the west gate of the Temple, north of Wilson’s Arch (1 Chron. xxvi. 16). But it is more naturally the stairway at Millo itself. Joash was living at Beth Millo, David’s house, and when he heard of the conspiracy he designed to flee down the stairs and through the Gate between two walls; but being a sick man he was being carried on a litter, as Lewin remarks, and while going down Silla,--not while going down _to_ Silla, for there is no preposition here in the Hebrew text--the assassins killed him.
_The Wall destroyed by Jehoash_, king of Israel, when he came against Amaziah of Judah, extended from the Gate of Ephraim unto the Corner Gate, 400 cubits (2 Kings xiv. 13; 2 Chron. xxv. 23). We can now, by aid of Herr Schick’s plan of the second wall, and our previous study of Nehemiah, see exactly this piece of wall, south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and running east and west.
_The Towers built by Uzziah_ were intended to strengthen the city just in this part where it had been found to be vulnerable. He “built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate, at the Valley Gate, and at the turning of the wall, and fortified them” (2 Chron. xxvi. 9). The “turning” here spoken of is a re-entering angle, and not improbably that one south-east of the Church of the Sepulchre, where we find the “Throne of the Governor” in later time.