What Does Judges 16:3 Mean?
And Samson lay down until half the night, and rose at half the night, and seized the doors of the city gate, and the two doorposts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and set them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the mountain that faces Hebron.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron.THE KEY
Samson carries the city’s entire threshold away, turning its boundary into a burden outside the walls.
THE MEANING
The gate’s doors, posts, and bar become a single load on Samson’s shoulders; the city’s threshold is carried from its place. The verse holds the force plainly: the barrier is seized, lifted, and removed. Its boundary does not remain fixed simply because it was built to close the way.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The boundary is fixed, and passage is possible only through the opening it provides.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשָּׂא
wayyissa
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
To lift, bear, or carry.
The verb נשא (nasa, “lift, bear, carry”) describes Samson carrying the whole gate assembly. Its branches include מַשָּׂא (massa, “load, burden”) and נָשָׂא עָוֹן (nasa avon, “bear crookedness”); English separates physical weight from what a person bears. Here, even the boundary itself becomes a load carried outside the city.
ALSO GROWS
massa: A load or burden.
מַשָּׂא
The gate and its fittings become a literal load on Samson’s shoulders.
nasa avon: To bear crookedness or guilt.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
The same root spans carrying a physical object and bearing what weighs on a person; here the weight is the city’s barrier.
THE PATTERN
A barrier loses its hold when its gate and bars are broken, opened, or carried out of place.
For he shatters gates of bronze, and cuts the bars of iron in two.I will go before you, and make the crooked places straight. I will break the doors of bronze, and hew through the bars of iron.When they had gone past the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate that carries into the city, which swung open for them by itself. They went out and passed through one street, and at once the messenger went away from him.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The same root, נשא (nasa, “bear, carry”), appears in Judges as “carried” and in Isaiah as “borne.” Judges makes the root’s physical weight visible: what stands as a barrier can be lifted onto shoulders.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us