THOSE who dwell in what the Psalmist calls "a dry and thirsty land" have no need to be told about the multifold benefits to be derived from water collected into large reservoirs or lakes and reserved for irrigation purposes. They know full well that these reservoirs, often constructed at great cost, are the means by which arid or semi-arid regions may be changed into fertile farms, prosperous towns, and growing commonwealths, abounding in comfort.
A short time ago, the writer went with some friends for a drive along the top of the high embankment surrounding one of these large reservoirs, so constructed as to conserve a great volume of water and to distribute it over a vast area of otherwise poor land. Across the placid water, upon which the sunset was reflecting its glory, could be seen field after field of ripening grain; acres of vegetables ready for market; orchards laden with fruit; clumps of trees, surrounding half-hidden homes and old-fashioned gardens,—a vista of loveliness from foothill to plain, all owing their beauty and fertility to the great reservoir, whose waters, carried through conduits and ditches, were allowed to trickle over the land and moisten it as though by gentle showers or night dews. It seemed like Isaiah's pleasant thought of Zion, that "the Lord... will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord."
Reservoirs for storing water, however, are not of modern origin. The dwellers in ancient Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, and Rome understood the value of a wise conservation and distribution of surplus waters; and many of the most beautiful stories in the Bible have their settings near these water repositories, or pools, as they are called in the Scriptures. The importance of water to the Hebrews in Palestine, and in the desert lands of their wanderings, made the pool of water an interesting spot, the word "pool," in the beautiful figurative language of the Hebrew tongue, meaning "benediction," or favor sent from God, also indicating both its material value and its spiritual import. In the Psalms we read that the joy and strength of those who trust in the Lord are as those who, "passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools." What sacred imagery clings about the pools of Bethesda and Gibeon, around the valley of Hebron with its springs, and about Jacob's well in Samaria! Of the pool of Hezekiah in Jerusalem it is told that "this same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David."
