The Brook Kidron appears at moments of transition in Scripture, often marking a passage from one place to another under weight or distress. It is a boundary that must be crossed, not casually, but with purpose.
When Jesus crosses the Kidron on the night of his arrest, the moment carries more than geographical meaning. It reflects a movement already underway: from glory to humiliation, from heaven to earth, from life to death.
This essay considers the Kidron as a place of passage, and what it suggests about the cost of Christ’s entry into the world he came to redeem.
“[T]he land wept aloud as all the people passed by, and the king crossed the brook Kidron, and all the people passed on toward the wilderness.” (2 Samuel 15:23)
“When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered.” (John 18:1)
While Matthew, Mark, and Luke provide lengthy accounts of Jesus’ time in the Garden of Gethsemane, John tells only of his entrance, followed by his immediate arrest. But John is the only gospel that mentions crossing the brook Kidron, a well-known landmark between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. This verse contains a great deal of history and meaning. It is significant for two reasons: first, it recalls another king who preceded Jesus across this brook, and second, his crossing symbolizes Jesus’ life on this earth.
David is the kind of king Israel hoped to see again. He is fearless, faithful, and blessed. So, when Jesus rides the donkey into Jerusalem, the crowd carpets the ground with palm leaves because they believe Jesus to be that king. And like David, he is driven out of Jerusalem by duplicitous and hateful forces. But significantly, they take a similar route out of the city–over the brook Kidron.
Two Conspiracies
Absalom carefully plots the overthrow of his father by moving back into Jerusalem and, for four years, telling any passerby, “Oh that I were judge in the land! I would give him justice. So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel” (2 Samuel 15:4-6). When Jesus formally introduces himself as the Christ to the Nazarene leaders of his home synagogue, they are angry enough to try to “throw him down the cliff” (Luke 4:29). Those religious leaders plot “how to destroy him” (Matthew 12:14) for the next three years.
In both cases, evil plans percolate for years before their execution. These conspiracies shouldn’t be taken lightly, for they originate within their own families. For David, this is his son. For Jesus, this family is his disciples: “And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!’” (Matthew 12:49). And from this family, one betrays him.
Two Betrayals
David and Jesus are betrayed by those closest to them. Ahithophel is “David’s counselor” but comes to be “among the conspirators with Absalom” (2 Samuel 15:31). The royal protocol is that no one gets near the king unless they are thoroughly vetted and closely trusted. Queen Esther, for example, takes her life into her own hands when she steps into King Ahasuerus’ presence, for “if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law–to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter” (Esther 4:11). In Nehemiah, the prophet “was very much afraid” simply because King Artaxerxes noticed him appearing sad (Nehemiah 2:2). King David may not have been as severe as these kings; nevertheless, Ahithophel is trusted, and his reversal of loyalties is a profound betrayal.
Many of the Psalms are both autobiographical and messianic, and this one especially so, “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me” (Psalms 41:9). David is writing about Ahithophel. Prophetically, Judas is in Ahithophel’s company. Judas “was a thief” long before his betrayal, “having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). When “the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put [Jesus] to death” during Passover week, “Satan entered into Judas” (Luke 22:2-3). Before the Last Supper, the betrayal plan is set in motion.
As with Ahithophel and David, Judas is part of a small group that eats, sleeps, and travels with their Lord for three years. While Jesus knows all along Judas will betray him when the moment arrives, “Jesus was troubled in his spirit” (John 13:21). After the meal is underway, he says to Judas, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (John 13:27).
Unlike David, Jesus is in complete control of his fate, and his very presence among us is his choice to obey his Father. Jesus is not suggesting to Judas that he betray him–Judas has already made that decision. Jesus is not commanding him to betray him–Judas betrays him of his free will. Scottish theologian John Brown (1784–1858) puts it this way: “It is as if he had said, ‘I know your determination is fixed. You are ready to betray; I am ready to be betrayed; there is no need of further delay.’”
Neither Judas nor Ahithophel is a passive traitor. Judas “went to the chief priests in order to betray him” (Mark 14:10), and Ahithophel volunteers, “I will arise and pursue David tonight. I will come upon him while he is weary and discouraged; I will strike down only the king” (2 Samuel 17:1). Both premeditate their betrayal and have a clear plan to follow through. After their plans are executed, they both have the same tragic end–hanging themselves in regret.
David runs from Ahithophel, but Jesus remains in Gethsemane, unafraid of Judas’ malice. He is quite prepared to face his fate. English clergyman Thomas Manton (1620–1677) explains that:
“[W]hen Christ saw the misery of mankind, he said, ‘Let it come on me.’ We raised the storm, Christ was cast in to allay it; Christ bore our sorrows; he would have this work in no other hands but his own. His earnestness to partake of the last Passover showeth his willingness; he had such a desire to see his body on the cross, that Judas seemed too slow, not diligent enough. ‘That thou doest, do quickly’ is not an approbation of his sin, but a testimony of his love.”
Both kings flee Jerusalem over the brook Kidron and up the Mount of Olives. One goes humiliated, “weeping as he went, barefoot and with his head covered” (2 Samuel 15:30) and continues “beyond the summit” (2 Samuel 16:1). But the other remains at that summit, “where God was worshipped” (2 Samuel 15:32), praying and weeping in such agony for strength to do the will of his Father that “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44) until he is arrested, abused, and crucified.
Although driven from the throne for a time, David returns and “reigned over all Israel” and “died at a good age, full of days, riches, and honor” (1 Chronicles 29:26, 28). It’s how we all hope to pass on from this life. But Jesus, unlike David, dies young: “He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days” (Psalms 102:23). Jesus dies with not even the clothes on his back: “they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also, his tunic” (John 19:23). Jesus dies so impoverished that he must entrust his mother’s care to another: “Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” (John 19:27). Finally, Jesus dies in disgrace and shame: “for a hanged man is cursed by God” (Deuteronomy 21:23).
David allows violence and deceit into his house and flees. Yet, having “done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41), Jesus stays, becoming the object of violence and deceit. But soon, Jesus will be the more excellent king, anticipated prophetically when “David himself calls him Lord” (Matthew 12:37), when Jesus “has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut” (Revelation 3:7), and when “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered” (Revelation 5:5). All of this will be fulfilled because Jesus chose to stay on the Mount of Olives to be taken and crucified for us.
Kidron
Strong’s Concordance says this word means “cedar, wood fragrant, dark, turbid; a winter torrent, flowing into the Dead Sea,” and in Hebrew is “a place for refuse; the idea of separation, withdrawal.” This description outlines the significance of this brook and valley. The word Kidron is typically preceded by “Nahal,” with the double meaning of “brook” and “valley,” and Jesus walked through that valley, “the valley of the shadow of death,” to drink the cup of God’s wrath.
Separation and Withdrawal
The brook Kidron is a recognizable boundary to the east of Jerusalem. Solomon once put a man under house arrest in Jerusalem for cursing Solomon’s father. Then, he used the Kidron to define the boundary of his movements (1 Kings 2:36). Jesus used the Mount of Olives, on the other side of the Kidron, as a regular place of refuge and safety from the Pharisees in Jerusalem. Luke says, “At night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet…as was his custom” (Luke 21:37, 22:39). Though not far, this short distance across the Kidron is separate and away from the city. Jesus goes there alone with his disciples and prays to his Father.
More than a benign geographical landmark, the Kidron has cultural and religious significance, but not in a positive way. It is a border between Jerusalem and all else that is not Jerusalem. When David and his entourage flee Jerusalem, “they halted at the last house” (2 Samuel 15:17), made some final arrangements, and then “the king crossed the brook Kidron, and all the people passed on toward the wilderness” (2 Samuel 15:23). There is Jerusalem, and then there is wilderness.
A Place for Refuse
Whenever a king or priest in the Old Testament repents of their cyclical sinfulness, characterized by idolatry, their response is to repent practically by removing the idolatrous objects.
“And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron.” (2 Kings 23:6)
“[T]he Levites took it and carried it out to the brook Kidron, all the altars for burning incense they took away and threw into the brook Kidron.” (2 Chronicles 29:16, 30:14)
Jesus crosses over this unholy pit of historical and spiritual failure, rebelliousness, and gross sin, for he comes to cleanse us from our sins. English pastor John Gill (1697–1771), in his Exposition of the Bible, sees it as “an emblem of this world, and the darkness and filthiness of it, through which Christ himself went, drinking ‘of the brook in the way’ [Psalm 110:7].” Bishop Edward Reynolds (1599–1676) says the “waters signify afflictions, and it notes the universality of the wrath which Christ suffered,” and writes: “that brook was the sink, as it were, of the temple, that into which all the ‘purgamenta’ [sweepings, offscourings, filth, dirt] and uncleanness of God’s house, all the cursed things were to be cast.” It is more than symbolic that this brook empties into a place called The Dead Sea.
This pollution flows into a valley Jesus likens to hell itself, calling it “Gehenna” (Matthew 10:28). Scottish theologian George Smith (1856–1942) says, “The bed of the Kidron was already a place for refuse and regarded as unclean. According to the Old Testament and the Talmud, the temple’s offal is cast into it, probably consumed by fire. In any case, we may see how the theological Gehinnom came to be located here.” If Jerusalem is a type of heaven on earth, clean and pure, then Kidron is a type of hell on earth, unclean and impure. His trek across it to be “obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8) was his whole purpose here.
“The life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11)
Castoff waste from the temple and the city is dumped into the Kidron Valley, which finds its way down to the brook. Over 1200 animal sacrifices were required annually in routine compliance with Mosaic law. But sacrifices often went above and beyond this. Solomon sacrificed 142,000 for the temple’s first dedication. Jewish literature even describes a later celebration as the “crushed Passover” because the crowd was so large that a man was crushed to death. Blood and the parts of sacrifices that are neither burnt up nor consumed are discarded into this valley. Solomon’s temple dedication involved “uncountable sheep and oxen” (1 Kings 8:5). It is hard to imagine the cleanup required for such work.
The blood from the sacrifices drains away from the altar and goes directly into Kidron. In addition, it is a place to deposit the excess debris of those sacrifices not consumed in the fire or consumed by the people. For example, when birds are sacrificed but then determined to be ineligible, the priest “throws them into the sewer and it rolls and goes down to the Brook of Kidron.” The Koren Talmud references one source indicating that “the drainpipes opened to a cistern one cubit wide and six hundred cubits deep.” This eighteen-inch width is more than many city stormwater runoff pipes, indicating the blood and refuse washed away along with the regular drainage of the city was substantial.
The Mishnah says that at the base of the altar, “at the south-western corner, there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water channel and flow out into the brook Kidron.” One of the priest’s final acts in the sacrificial ceremony is pouring “the rest of the blood…out at the base of the altar” (Exodus 29:12). The Epstein Talmud notes that “On the eve of the Passover they stopped up the holes through which the blood of the sacrifices passed out to the stream of Kidron” and cites a rabbi’s reply to some who questioned this practice: “It is praiseworthy for the sons of Aaron to walk in blood up to their ankles” (emphasis added). The amount of blood that flowed to the Kidron over those centuries is incalculable.
There were also cemeteries in Kidron Valley. Jeremiah describes it as a “whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes” (Jeremiah 31:40). Professor Paul Haupt (1858-1926) of Johns Hopkins University wrote, “The flaming pyres with the dead bodies…were in the Kidron valley between the Temple hill and Mount Olivet.” He notes that even the name Kidron derives from “qidron,” which “may be an ancient word for cemetery.” This presents a problem considering the mandates, “Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days” (Numbers 19:11) and, no priest will “make himself unclean for the dead among his people, except for his closest relatives” (Leviticus 21:1). The Koren Talmud dictates a measurable restriction, stating that “when one walks in a cemetery, within four cubits of a grave,” some priestly practices are “prohibited.” This necessitates their entire avoidance of the Kidron Valley.
The Kidron is considered so unclean that for the sacrifice of the red heifer described in Numbers 19, the Mishnah says that “they made a causeway from the Temple Mount to the Mount of Olives, for fear of any grave in the depths below, to burn the Heifer.” This bridge across the Kidron Valley was built at great expense for the extremely rare red heifer sacrifice (Numbers 19:2). Rabbis counted how many red heifers had been sacrificed before the temple was destroyed in 70 AD and arrived at nine, two recorded in the Torah and seven in the Mishnah. While the red heifer would have become ineligible for sacrifice on the Mount of Olives if it had touched the Kidron, the true sacrifice it represented did walk through that valley on the way to the Mount of Olives.
Some Jewish traditions hold that the Messiah will perform the tenth and final red heifer’s sacrifice when he comes. But Jesus himself is certainly that tenth and perfect red heifer, already taken from Mount Olivet, whose sweat “like great drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44) fell there and whose final sacrifice sanctified the new temple of his body in the true temple in heaven. The next time we see the Messiah, “his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west” (Zechariah14:4). The Messiah will come not to sacrifice on the Mount of Olives but to destroy this place of sacrifice, for it need never be used again.
Because of our sin in another garden, Eden, we are responsible for this unclean world, wholly a Kidron Valley. Jesus, a holy God from a place without sin and uncleanness, willingly and obediently left heaven and walked among us in this wholly unclean world. The word “unclean” occurs 118 times in the first 15 chapters of Leviticus leading up to the sacrifice of atonement. How great is the sacrifice Jesus made when he left the clean purity of heaven and came here to make us clean by his atonement, for “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
From Unclean to Clean
The laws of cleanliness are found mainly in Leviticus but are referenced throughout scripture. Among other things, touching a corpse or anyone with a bodily discharge would make one unclean. Jesus encounters many unclean people and is often criticized for doing so. “A leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Mark 8:2-3). A woman “came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.’ And immediately the flow of blood dried up” (Mark 5:27). In the parable of the Good Samaritan the priest and Levite would not help the assaulted man in order that they would not become unclean.
In the Law, when unclean touches clean, both become unclean. These afflictions are highlighted specifically when it instructs the Israelites to “put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge” (Numbers 5:2). Jesus should have become unclean because he touches and is touched by someone unclean. But the Old Testament has three instances where this is reversed. One is the sin offering: “Whatever touches its flesh shall be holy” (Leviticus 6:27). Jesus is that sin offering to clean all who touch him in faith.
Another instance is of the furniture described in Exodus 30,consecrated with “a sacred anointing oil…a holy anointing oil.”After the consecration of the articles of furniture, “Whatever touches them will become holy.”Additionally, the only people who may be anointed with this oil are the priests, for it “shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person, and you shall make no other like it in composition” (Exodus 30:29). Jesus, our sinless High Priest, is no ordinary person, descended from heaven, born of a virgin, and in whom the Holy Spirit “descended on him in bodily form” (Luke 3:22) at his baptism.
The final instance is found in Ezekiel, in which the priests “shall put off the garments in which they have been ministering and lay them in the holy chambers. And they shall put on other garments, lest they transmit holiness to the people with their garments” (Ezekiel 44:19). Touching Jesus’ garment in faith healed the woman with the discharge and his garment becomes salvation for us, for “he has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10). Because our Savior was “clothed in a robe dipped in blood” (Revelation 19:13), we are now clothed “with fine linen, bright and pure” (Revelation 19:8). Of his robe, even the soldiers at his crucifixion said, “Let us not tear it” (John 19:24), as they unwittingly bore witness to his priesthood, for the high priest’s robe was intentionally constructed “so that it may not tear” (Exodus 28:32). Each of these three speak to three aspects of Jesus himself, who is the sin offering, who is the true Temple and whose garment covers us in his righteousness.
John Owen says that “the tabernacle, with all the parts, furniture, and services of it…were representative of Christ in the discharge of his office.” Early in Jesus’ ministry, his feet are anointed “by a woman of the city, who was a sinner” (Luke 7:37). Just before his death, his head is anointed with a “flask of very expensive ointment” (Matthew 26:7). From head to toe and beginning to end, Jesus is the temple. Each article of furniture represents the many aspects of the infinite perfection of his sacrifice. Those he touches and those who touch him in faith are cleansed and made acceptable to God.
Presbyterian minister John Flavel (1627–1691) says, “This brook running through the valley of Jehoshaphat, that fertile soil, together with the filth of the city which it washed away, gave the waters a black tincture, and so fitly resembled those grievous sufferings of Christ, in which he tasted both the wrath of God and men.” All of the sacrifices on the altar speak of Jesus, the last and perfect sacrifice, whose blood is the final contribution to Kidron, ending the need for more. Because Jesus went through this valley, we do not have to.
While the idolatrous sins of those in the Old Testament may seem distant, we each have our Kidrons into which we sweep away our sins into hidden closets. English bishop Joseph Hall (1574–1656) says, “How many, like unto the brook Cedron, run from Jerusalem through the vale of Jehoshaphat and end their course in the Dead Sea!” What place could be darker or more turbulent than where we hide our worst spiritual selves, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalms 32:3).
But Jesus also knows that hidden place and passes through it for our redemption so that we will find true rest for our souls. We need only let him occupy that space to receive forgiveness. He carries this sin to the cross and removes it from us eternally. When Moses pleads for his sinful flock, God responds, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14). Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). Charles Spurgeon says, “Rest, rest now; not rest after death; but it is a rest given when we come to Jesus, given then and there.” And available here and now.
This essay is part of Shadows of Christ: Twelve Essays.
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