In a walled town, at the gate
What would have worried a blind person most in a walled town, where life ran through the gate, as at Jabesh-gilead or Jericho, or where Job sat in judgment?
Job 29:7-17; 1 Samuel 11:1-3; Mark 10:46-47.
What leads up to it
The gate of a walled town was its public square: the place of trade, news, judgment and begging. Job describes taking his seat there. Jabesh-gilead faced a siege at its gate. Bartimaeus sat by the road outside Jericho.
What it says
Job sat in the gate and says he served as eyes to the blind there. Nahash's threat to Jabesh would have blinded every man in the town in one eye. Bartimaeus's place was beside the road where the crowds passed, and he lived on what they gave.
What it may tell us
A town gate concentrated people, which is where a beggar needed to be and where a judge like Job could be found. Walls, steps and crowds are harder for a blind person than open ground, but a fixed place by the gate was also a kind of standing: people knew where to find him. Whether that was care or containment is the open question of these pages.
From Brian
A fixed position would let a blind person grow familiar with his surroundings, so that sounds and smells became useful. I would worry about getting in the way of the traffic through the gate, especially the animals hauling heavy loads.
A blind beggar at the gate would hear an awful lot. It was the hub of everything. And in a small town like this it seems quite possible that a blind person could move about on his own, unaided.
How I would do it now
Open for Brian: take the duties and daily tasks a blind person held in this setting, and say how you would approach each one today, having once done such things with sight and now without it.
Other voices
Open: other blind people and their families will be asked the same question, and their answers will appear here with their permission.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
The gate was where a walled town lived. The 1915 encyclopedia says most men passed through it every day, that it was the place for meeting and assemblies, that markets were held in the open space beside it, and that the courts sat there. Smith's adds that gates were guarded and shut at nightfall, and Easton's that prophets delivered their messages there. Whoever needed to be found, or needed to find people, went to the gate.
Source: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Gate"; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition) and Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entries "Gate."
That is where Job sat. Henry notes that his "I was eyes to the blind" comes in a passage about the gate, "the place of judgment," to which every man had free access. Job's help to the blind was given in public, in the town's one place of business.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Job 29.
Streets inside such a town, as Smith's describes eastern towns, were narrow, winding and dark, and each street was shut off at night. Beggars, it says of New Testament times, had a fixed place at street corners, at the Temple gates or at the gates of private houses. A known place was both a livelihood and a boundary.
Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entries "Street" and "Beggar, Begging."
Two gate stories show what blindness meant in war. At Jabesh-gilead the Ammonite king demanded every man's right eye; Henry explains that a soldier held his shield on the left, covering the left eye, so "a soldier without his right eye was in effect blind." At Jerusalem the Jebusites mocked David with "the blind and the lame," and the sources disagree about whether real blind people stood on that wall or the phrase was a taunt. Jericho's walls, Smith's notes, were thick enough to build houses on.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on 1 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 5; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation), Book VII, chapter 3; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Jerusalem"; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Jericho."
Edersheim walks a reader into an ancient fortified town: a low outer wall and ditch, then the city wall and "a massive gate, often covered with iron, and secured by strong bars and bolts," with a watchtower above. Just inside was the sheltered place where the elders sat to discuss public affairs and the news of the day. The 1915 encyclopedia gives the mechanism: doors turning on pivots set in sockets, a bar dropped into clamps, often an inner gate as well. To "possess the gate" was to possess the city.
Source: Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life (1876), chapter 6; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Gate"; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Gate."
Beyond the gate the streets met in open squares. Country people hawked produce of field, orchard and dairy; foreign merchants and pedlars laid out their wares; the crowd, in Edersheim's phrase, was "chattering, chaffing, good-humoured." Streets were named for their trades, and workmen sat outside their shops trading greetings with passers-by. Markets were held at the gate itself: Elisha's promise that grain would be sold "in the gate of Samaria" meant the siege would end and the market reopen.
Source: Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life (1876), chapter 6; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on 2 Kings 7; Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entry "Market-place."
The gate was the courtroom. Elders were the local magistrates, and "judges of the gate" is a biblical phrase. Ruth 4 shows a hearing: Boaz goes up to the gate, gathers ten elders, and the sale is sealed when a man draws off his sandal and hands it over. Job 29 shows the manners of the place: when a man of standing arrived, the young men stepped back and the aged rose and stood. Amos shows its failure: "they turn aside the poor in the gate." A blind man at the gate heard all of this, and the law's concern for fair judgment of the weak was aimed exactly here.
Source: Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entries "Elder" and "Gate"; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Ruth 4, Job 29 and Amos 5.
The gate had staff. A watchman stood on the roof above it and called down what he saw; a porter kept the doors. In 2 Samuel 18 David sits between the two gates while the watchman reports each runner and recognizes one by the way he runs. Gates were shut at nightfall, and the chambers over the gateway were where business was done. What the shelf does not give is the daily routine: hours, tolls, who sat where by right.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on 2 Samuel 18; Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entry "Porter"; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Gate."
The passage
Job 29:7-17
7 When I went out to the city gate and took my seat in the public square,
8 the young men saw me and withdrew, and the old men rose to their feet.
9 The princes refrained from speaking and covered their mouths with their hands.
10 The voices of the nobles were hushed, and their tongues stuck to the roofs of their mouths.
11 For those who heard me called me blessed, and those who saw me commended me,
12 because I rescued the poor who cried out and the fatherless who had no helper.
13 The dying man blessed me, and I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.
14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; justice was my robe and my turban.
15 I served as eyes to the blind and as feet to the lame.
16 I was a father to the needy, and I took up the case of the stranger.
17 I shattered the fangs of the unjust and snatched the prey from his teeth.
1 Samuel 11:1-3
1 Then Nahash the Ammonite came up and laid siege to Jabesh-gilead. All the men of Jabesh said to him, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”
2 But Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I will make a treaty with you on one condition, that I may put out everyone’s right eye and bring reproach upon all Israel.”
3 “Hold off for seven days,” replied the elders of Jabesh, “and let us send messengers throughout Israel. If there is no one to save us, we will surrender to you.”
Mark 10:46-47
46 Next, they came to Jericho. And as Jesus and His disciples were leaving Jericho with a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting beside the road.
47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”