34 NADAV NA’AMAN of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period (see below). Second, he distinguished between the quarter surrounded by a wall, namely, the Ophel, which David fortified, and “the rest of the city”, namely, the City of David, which Joab repaired. The differences between the Samuel and Chronicles’ descrip- tions are twofold: first, regarding the identity of the fortified quar- ter (the City of David versus the quarter of Ophel); and second, in the Chronicles’ addition of the element of repairment (verb hyh; . see Neh 4,2 [MT 3,34]). As we shall see, the Chronicler’s descrip- tion accurately reflects the situation in the city of his time, which included two separate quarters: the City of David and the Ophel. Some details of the City of David might be gained by analyzing Book of Nehemiah. Let me start with the new governor’s night tour (Neh 2,11-15). Nehemiah left the City of David through the Valley Gate, located on its western side. The sections of the ancient wall he inspected were all located in the desolated southern quarter of the City of David; its eastern section was so badly destroyed that he was forced to ride northward along the Kidron Valley (v. 15a). The night tour ended with his re-entering into the city through the Valley Gate (v. 15b). Why did the tour encompass only the southern quarter of the city? The answer is self-evident: the memoir’s author sought to describe a ruined city whose walls were utterly destroyed. For this purpose, he selected the quarter that in his time was mainly desolate with dilap- idated walls, namely, the City of David ― thereby illustrating to his readers the utter destruction that Nehemiah should have repaired. However, the reference to a city gate (the Valley Gate), by which he came out of the inhabited quarter and re-entered after completing his mission, indicates that the physical conditions in the quarter north of it (the Ophel) were different from those of the surveyed quarter (the City of David) 30. When examining the description of how the wall was repaired, the absence of building work in the long section of a thousand cubits (about 475 meters according to the short cubit) between the Valley Gate and Dung Gate is remarkable (Neh 3,13). Either the wall run- ning along this line was not damaged in the course of the Babylon- 30 The secrecy that surrounds the tour and its timing at night are literary motifs aimed at magnifying the severity of the situation. They should not be taken as representation of the reality of Nehemiah’s time.