Why did Samson bother to carry the heavy gates and doorframe all the way to Hebron, forty miles away? It strikes us as little more than an adolescent practical joke, another burst of obnoxious pride. Samson was supposed to begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines
(Judges 13:5), but instead he acts on a personal level.1 He is going out of his way here to show Judah the living proof of his victory. These gates announce to the people of Hebron, Judah’s leading city, that this time, Judah is not going to bind Samson to hand him over to the Philistines.
3 But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.