The Bible is true: the gates of Solomon
- Albert Benhamou
- Feb 27
- 3 min read
When David died, his son Solomon succeeded him. God granted wisdom and knowledge to the new king, and his kingdom knew peace. He also allowed him to build a Temple dedicated to worship, to replace the Tabernacle that had been made by Moses and used since the time of the Hebrews in the desert.
Let us look at the continuation of the historical and biblical chronologies (for the earlier dates, refer to the previous articles since Adam):
year 2699 (1061 BCE): reign of Saul, first king of Israel
year 2700 (1060 BCE): David against Goliath
year 2708 (1052 BCE): reign of David over all Israel
year 2745 (1015 BCE): reign of Solomon; start of the construction of the Temple
year 2752 (1008 BCE): inauguration of the Temple of Solomon
Solomon also built three cities according to the Bible:
And this is the account of the levy which king Solomon raised; to build the house of the Lord, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer. (I Kings 9:15)
Archaeologists have obviously been interested, since the middle of the 19th century, in finding traces of these three biblical cities. Over the years, these sites have been identified. During their respective excavations, what was the surprise to find these three cities with their gates in all respects comparable to each other, apart from some constraints of topology of the respective terrain (as it is the case in Gezer). The Israeli archaeologist Yigal Yadin even compared the measurements of the gates of these three biblical cities, Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo, given here in meters:
Ge Ha Me
Gate length 19.0 20.3 20.3
Gate width 16.2 18.0 17.5
Between towers 5.5 6.1 6.1
Entrance width 3.1 4.2 4.2
Width of walls 1.6 1.6 1.6
The results of these measurements leave no doubt: the three gates were built at the same time and, most certainly, they were designed by the same architect! This fact corroborates the biblical story that these cities were built (or rather redeveloped because new Israelite-type gates were added to previous Canaanite gates) during the same monarchy, that of Solomon. Why Solomon? Because these gates opened a new "concept" 3x2, which saw the start of creating three guard posts on each side (left and right) of the entrance passage. Now we know that before his father David, the gates of Canaanite cities were all designed on a 2x2 model (therefore two guard posts on each side), as we see in particular in Shaarayim which was a city that existed before the reign of David and was reused by him. Then, after Solomon, all the Israelite cities (for example Lachish which was developed by Rehoboam, Solomon's son) were built or redeveloped according to the 3x2 model that was adopted from then on. In conclusion, these three cities were built at the time of Solomon, as the Bible tells us. The Bible is right!
I hope that this article on the theme "the Bible is true" was of interest to you. Do not hesitate to send me your comments, while waiting for a next biblical episode proven by history and archaeology.
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Albert Benhamou
Private tour guide in Israel
February 2025
