Judges 16:3

3. Lay till midnight He, perhaps, knew or suspected what his enemies were doing, and his humour took occasion again to make them the butt of ridicule.

Doors of the gate The two leaves, or double folding doors.

Two posts The two sideposts to which the doors were hung, being fastened either by hinges or by sockets.

Bar and all Better, as in the margin, with the bar. The bar was a large heavy crosspiece or bolt of wood or iron, sometimes reaching across the entire breadth of the two doors, and fastened in sockets in the sideposts or walls, and sometimes merely sliding backward and forward like an ordinary bolt. Samson tore away the whole gateway doors, posts, and bar and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of a hill that is before Hebron. “The present town of Gaza has no gates, being like an open village; yet the places of the former ones remain, and are pointed out around the hill. One of these, at the foot of the slope on the southeast, is shown as the gate whose doors and bars were carried off by Samson.” Robinson. About half an hour’s walk southeast of the town is a partially isolated hill, ( el-Muntar,) from which the mountains of Hebron are visible, and also a wide view over all the surrounding country. An old tradition calls it “Samson’s Mount,” and points it out as the hill to which he carried the gates of Gaza; and Dr. Robinson says, “There is nothing improbable in the supposition.” The expression before Hebron does not mean in the immediate vicinity of Hebron, but is better rendered towards or over against, as in Deuteronomy 32:49, where Mount Nebo is said to be over against Jericho, though it was many miles away, and on the other side of Jordan.