iron strongly secured in the inside. As soon as we entered, it was again made fast with various bolts and bars of iron; a precaution extremely necessary in a desert place, exposed to the incursions of the Arabs."

STONE GATES AND BARS.

DEUTERONOMY iii. 5.

"All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars."

In the towns of the Hauran, the doors, as well as other parts of the buildings, are of stone. Mr. Buckingham saw one "fifteen inches thick, from which some idea may be formed of these ponderous masses, how unwieldy they must be to open and shut, and with what propriety they might be enumerated under the terms of 'gates and bars,' when speaking of the threescore cities of Og, the king of Bashan; as these ponderous doors of stone were all closed on the inside with bars going horizontally or perpendicularly across them."-BUCKINGHAM'S Arab Tribes, pp. 221, 222.

.

"We came to Kuffer, once a considerable town. It is built in the usual style of this country, entirely of stone; most of the houses are still entire; the doors are uniformly of stone, and even the gates of the town, between nine and ten feet high, are of a single piece of stone."-BURCKHARDT's Syria, &c., p. 90.

LARGE GATES A MARK FOR ROBBERS.

PROVERBS Xvii. 19.

"He that exalteth his gate seeketh destruction." MATT. vii. 13, 14.

"Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat ; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

Here is an evident allusion to the attacks made by the Arabs, who are accustomed, when they find the doorways large enough, to ride into the houses of those whom they mean to plunder. To hinder them from so doing, Thevenot tells us, that the door of the house in which the French merchants lived at Rama, was not three feet high, and that all the doorways in the town were equally low.

To this oppressive practice, which is not confined to the Arabs, Zephaniah may refer, ch. i. 8, 9, “I will punish the princes, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel" (which does not belong to them); and adds, that "in the same day he will punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit;" which passage may be thus explained :-" I will punish those who wear the apparel which by violence and deceit their servants have brought them."-See HARMER, vol. i. pp. 217-220.

"Towards the streets the houses have few or no windows, but appear like blank walls, in which there is a gate or wicket, so small as to require those who enter to stoop very low. Such narrow entries must have been alluded to in the expression used by our Lord, in answer to a question put to him regarding the number of those who should be saved."-RAE WILSON's Travels, vol. ii. p. 120.

The streets of Persia, which are narrow, crooked, irregular, and but roughly and partially paved, present nothing to the eye but dead mud walls, from eight to fifteen feet high. These are penetrated by gates or doors (leading to the court or quadrangle), small and low, in proportion to the prudence as well as the standing of the owner. For high, large gates are a token of wealth, which provokes the envy of equals, who will not be slow to find accusations, or the cupidity of superiors, who can as readily find pretexts sufficient to relieve the thrifty owner of his surplus revenue, if to strip him of nothing more. "He that exalteth his gate," as Solomon

warns us,

"seeketh destruction."-PERKINS' Residence in

Persia, pp. 152, 153.

KING'S GATE.

EZEKIEL xliv. 2, 3.

"This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut. It is for the prince."

It is a common custom in Persia, when a great man has built a palace, that he treats the king and his grandees in it for several days. Then the great gate of it is open. But, when these festivities are over, they shut it up, never more to be opened.-SIR J. CHARDIN; HARMER'S Observations, vol. ii. pp. 475, 476.

LOCKS AND KEYS.

JUDGES iii. 23–25.

"...And (Ehud) shut the doors of the parlour...and locked them...... Therefore (Eglon's servants) took a key and opened them."

NEH. iii. 3.

"The fish-gate did the sons of Hassenaah build, who also laid the beams thereof, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof."

CANT. v. 4.

My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door."

ISAIAH Xxii. 22.

"The key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open." (Revelations iii. 7.)

MATT. xvi. 19.

“And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

LUKE Xi. 52.

have taken away the

"Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye

key of knowledge: ye enter not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."

REV. i. 18.

"I have the keys of hell and of death."

ix. 1.

"And to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."

Their locks and keys are often only of wood. The keys of the city gates of Grand Cairo are bits of timber, with little pieces of wire that lift up other pieces of wire which are in the lock, and enter into certain little holes, out of which the ends of wire that are in the key having thrust them, the gate is opened. But, without the key, a

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little soft paste upon the end of one's finger will do the matter quite as well. The ease with which these locks are opened without a key, puts us in mind of the words My beloved put in his hand by the hole," &c.; he attempted to open the door by putting in his finger at the key-hole, but could not. "Then I was greatly moved ; I rose up to open to my beloved;" and as in verse 1, he had said, "I have gathered myrrh," so, having tried to open the door with a hand filled with this precious gum, the spouse, when she went to the door, found that her fingers gathered it up from the handles of the lock in the language of poetry, "her hand dropped myrrh, her fingers sweet-smelling myrrh." -See HARMER'S Observations, vol. i. pp. 392-396.

"The locks of the gates of quarters, public buildings, &c., are mostly two feet, or even more, in length."LANE'S Modern Egyptians, p. 22.

“We met a man carrying a wooden key hanging over his breast, and an iron key over his shoulder, hanging down his back; and we found that it is common for merchants, when they carry more than one key, to suspend them in this way over the shoulder."—Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews, p. 249.

"One man kindly invited us to enter his cottage and sit down on his carpet. He showed us the key commonly used for the door, which is nothing more than a piece of wood with pegs fastened in it, corresponding to small holes in a wooden bolt within. It is put through a hole in the door, and draws the bolt in a very simple manner. It is generally carried in the girdle; though sometimes we were told it is tied to something else, and worn over the shoulder in the way spoken of by the prophet. The large opening through which the key is introduced illustrates these words in the Song-' My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door.' Ibid. p. 112.