The hill David captured three thousand years ago is still called by the name he found on it. 31.7683°N, 35.2137°E. The city named 660 times in Scripture has kept both its name and its coordinates. Few cities on earth can say that.
The Day It Became David's Capital
Around 1000 BC, David captured a hilltop city from the Jebusites and made it Israel's capital (2 Samuel 5). That same hill is now an archaeological park — the City of David — just south of the Old City. You can walk through Hezekiah's Tunnel, an Iron Age waterway cut around 700 BC and matching the biblical record in 2 Kings 20:20 to the letter, still carrying spring water today.
The Center of Three Religions
Jerusalem is the only city where all three Abrahamic religions hold sacred ground. The Western Wall (a retaining wall of Herod's Temple Mount, not of Solomon's Temple), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (site of the crucifixion and tomb), and the Dome of the Rock (where Muhammad is said to have ascended) — ten minutes apart on foot.
Where Jesus Walked His Last Road
The Via Dolorosa — "Way of Sorrows" — through the Old City marks 14 stations from Pilate's judgment to Golgotha. Scholars debate whether today's route matches the first-century path exactly, but what's certain is that for 2,000 years people have walked this route with the same verses in mind.
Jerusalem Today
Jerusalem today is home to just under a million people — roughly 60% Jewish, 40% Arab — and rarely a week passes without the city making global headlines. The peace Scripture prophesied and the tension of the present hour exist in the same streets. Psalm 122:6 is perhaps the one prayer that has remained literally current for 3,000 years.
Write It Out
Copy the verse out for yourself. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. By the time you finish it, you notice it is not a description. It never says the city is at peace. It tells you to ask for the one thing the city does not have, and that is why the line has never gone out of date.
That you can find a 3,000-year-old place name on today's map — that alone connects Scripture to the present.