Hebrew "the Ophel," i.e. the "swelling declivity" by which the temple hill slopes off on its southern side as a long round narrow promontory between the mouth of the Tyropeon central valley of the city and the Kedron valley of Jehoshaphat. On its eastern side is the fount of the Virgin; at the bottom is the lower outlet of the same spring, the pool of Siloam. Here was the "great tower" (Eder? Hebrew Micah 4:8) and the Levites' residence. It was near the water gate (Nehemiah 3:26-27; Nehemiah 11:21). Jotham "built much on the wall of Ophel" Manasseh "compassed about Ophel" (2 Chronicles 27:3; 2 Chronicles 33:14); on the Ophla, as Josephus calls it (see B.J. 5:4, section 2; 6, section 1, 3). For "the forts" (Isaiah 32:14). translated Ophel "the mound." James the Less was called Oblias, explained "bulwark of the people" (Hegesippus, in Eusebius H.E. ii. 23), perhaps originally Ophli-am, from Ophel. He was martyred by being thrown from the temple pinnacle near the boundary of Ophel.