158 City Gates

Museum Description: Reconstruction of the Balawat Gates

Room: 6/Case: None/Number: None

Scripture: Judges 16:3

Seeing a recreation of these ancient city gates helps us to imagine the account about Samson in the city of Gaza.  He pulled up the gates and posts, as we can see here with tree trunks as the gateposts, and took them to the top of a mountain!  We can understand it could only have been done with Jehovah's help.  The Philistine city of Gaza would then have been left undefended.

Cities typically had as few gates as possible, as they were a weak point when the city was under attack.  For this reason, they were often designed as part of a fortification in the wall, with towers to defend the gates.  In fact, as Solomon is said to have built Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer, the discovery of identically designed gates at Megiddo and Hazor caused archaeologist to also search at Gezer.  Sure enough, exactly the same design was found there too!  The Bible proved to be accurate history and a reliable guide for their excavations.  Other similar or related artefacts are on display in The British Museum.