Zev Orenstein
speaker
36 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Zev Orenstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
My name is Zev Orenstein, and I'm the Director of International Affairs here at the City of David, which is the biblical site of ancient Jerusalem, the place where Jerusalem began. 2005, all this is underground. One morning, an archaeologist by the name of Eilat Mazar, she comes into our visitor center, says, you need to move your offices. We ask her why.
She says, beneath your feet, you'll find the palace of King Deid. What do you do with that, right? So, you know, we asked her why. So she shows us something. It's in the Israel Museum today, found 60 years ago. You have over here, Royal Phoenician capital. So if you look at these columns over here, imagine a column. This is sitting on top of the column.
This proves that where we're standing is the location of King David's palace. What's the connection? In 2 Samuel 5, verse 11, it says, King Hiram of Tyre sent envoys to David with cedar logs, carpenters, and stonemasons, and they built a palace for David. The Phoenicians are the ones who the Bible says built David's palace. We find here the royal Phoenician capital. Why?
Well, because the Phoenicians were the ones who built David's palace. They start to dig. They find, to the north, to the east, walls about eight meters thick. It's clear there's a massive structure here. The question is, from what time period? They find pottery and other organic material at the base of the walls that Dr. Mazar dates to 3,000 years ago, to the time of David.
Other people date it to about 100 years after David. So the debate is not what this area was. This was the original Capitol Hill, the royal government viewing center of the Davidic dynasty. And the other thing that we have over here is two clay seals, right?
In ancient times, before you had encryption and encoding and whatever, you'd write your letter, then you would roll it up, tie it up, and before you'd hand it to the messenger, you'd take your ring, stick it into the clay, and now on your ring, and now on the clay is your name and the son of your father's name. She's digging here, and she finds two seals just like this one.
This is what Hebrew used to look like. And on the seals, there are names. Two of the four ministers that made up the security cabinet of King Tzedekiah, the last king of the Davidic dynasty, right before the Babylonian destruction. I mean, these are real people.
Their seals were found in the royal government center of the Davidic dynasty, where you would expect the ministers of the king to be, right? Not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact. And a few meters away from here, the same Dr. Mazar finds the seal of King Hezekiah and of the prophet Isaiah. So, I mean, you asked before, how legitimate is this?
I mean, the seals here are incontrovertible. Was King David here, ruling here, or his grandson? I can't tell you. The Davidic dynasty was ruling from here. This is where it was, not the old city.
So think about it. Bathsheba, it says, what happened to Bathsheba? Right? It says one night the AC is not working in the palace. He goes out into the balcony and he looks down into the city. What does he see? He sees a woman bathing on the roof. How is it possible for him to see someone bathing on the roof unless he's at the top of the city.
Now he can look down when you're in the place where the, right. So think about it. When you're in the place where the Bible happened, the words of the Bible come to life.
And so here's how you'd store water. Now, keep in mind, if we're coming from next to the palace, this is not a private person's cistern. This, you can see, is a massive cistern. So the cistern that archaeologists believe could have been the cistern where Jeremiah was thrown into a pit. Jeremiah was perceived at that time to be a traitor.
He had said that if the people don't change their ways, Jerusalem is going to be destroyed. But he was a prophet of doom. Nobody wanted to hear what he had to say. And the advisors of King Zedekiah got tired of hearing this guy go around calling for the surrender of the city. And so they throw him down into a pit. Now, can I tell you for sure Jeremiah's thrown into this pit? I can't tell you that.
Right? And if not this pit, one near here like this one. But it says what happens?
If you're thrown into them. So, but here you say, so what's the plan? He's going to drown, right? It's a cistern. But the Bible makes it clear. There's no water. There's mud. And he's sinking into the mud until a servant of the king goes before Zedekiah and he says, you might not like what Jeremiah is saying.
it's not him who said it it's a prophet it's a man of god right the words are god's words you can't do this to jeremiah and the king says all right you're right go take 30 people with you and pull jeremiah up out of the pit and then it goes on to say how he you know goes on it keeps true to his message right about what's going to happen to jerusalem right but this is where
the back to the last days of Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroy it. You have Jeremiah here sinking into the mud, hearing the destruction, the impending destruction up above. This is where it's playing out. We take for granted today the ability to be critical of our leadership, to hold our leaders accountable.
But going back thousands of years, there was a position in biblical times, that of the prophet, whose role was to go to the highest levels of society and to hold those leaders accountable and let them know that there are consequences for falling short. There are consequences for making poor decisions, unethical decisions.
Probably gonna get it good and hard, but that's the... Every single day here in the city of David, we're unearthing antiquities that show not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact, Jerusalem's biblical heritage coming to life. We are standing right now in the Givati parking lot excavation. Now, you might wonder, why would you name an archaeological excavation after a parking lot?
Not too long ago, there was actually a parking lot here. And one day we said, we're going to build our visitor center here. And the Israel Antiquities Authority said, well, hold on. Before you build anything, we need to make sure there's nothing exciting beneath your feet. They come with ground penetrating radar. They scan down and they find 10 layers of ancient Jerusalem civilization.
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