Samson lay until midnight, and arose at midnight, and laid hold of the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and plucked them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron.
"As the gates of ancient cities were often nail-studded and covered with metal to prevent them from being burnt during an attack, the weight may have been greater than that of the timber itself." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 174. For a diagram of a typical city gate complex and a discussion of the difficulty of removing the gates undetected, see Block, Judges . . ., p. 450.] 