Gaza

If we read Judges 16, we will encounter the city of Gaza.

Samson Goes to the City of Gaza

16 One day Samson went to the city of Gaza. He saw a prostitute there and went in to stay the night with her. 2 Someone told the people of Gaza, “Samson has come here.” They wanted to kill him, so they surrounded the city. They hid near the city gate and waited all night for him. They were very quiet all night long. They had said to each other, “When morning comes, we will kill Samson.”

3 But Samson only stayed with the prostitute until midnight. Then he got up and grabbed the doors of the city gate and pulled them loose from the wall. He pulled down the doors, the two posts, and the bars that lock the doors shut. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill near the city of Hebron.

Below is the location of Gaza based on Google Maps. It is located west of the Dead Sea, near the coastline of Israel.

Samson is probably the basis for many super heroes with tremendous strength. Hercules was probably based on him. Cerberus, a two headed dog that breathed fire was probably based on the account where Samson took two pairs of foxes, tied their tails together with a torch, to put the fields of the Philistines on fire. We can read about that in Judges 15.

4 So Samson went out and caught 300 foxes. He took two foxes at a time and tied their tails together to make pairs. Then he tied a torch between the tails of each pair of foxes. 5 He lit the torches that were between the foxes’ tails and let them run through the grain fields of the Philistines. In this way he burned up the plants growing in their fields and the stacks of grain they had cut. He also burned up their vineyards and their olive trees.

I pray that your faith is strengthened knowing that the locations in the Bible are real places. It is not a book of fiction. It is God's Word. If you haven't committed your life to Jesus Christ, I would like to invite you to do so by reading this post.