It is, indeed, possible that the opening or cavity in the ancient stone or metal threshold was sometimes the bason, or vessel, into which the covenanting blood was poured.[671] In that case, the correspondence of the opening of the woman, and the socket of the threshold, would be more obvious. Important inscriptions are usually found at or around these so-called “door sockets,” in Babylonian relics; and there is still doubt in many minds whether these cavities were always hinge sockets.
The word “hinges,” or “hangers,” is at the best an inaccurate and misleading term, as applied to the pivots or knuckles on which an ancient door swung in its socket. Ancient doors were not hung on hinges, but they swung on pivots. Instead of a hinge, there was a knuckle or pintle, with a corresponding socket, or cavity, or opening, in the threshold or door-sill. Both Gesenius[672] and Stade[673] give “socket” as one of the meanings of _pôth_. The plural, _pôthoth_, of course, refers to the sockets of two leaves of a double door on one threshold.
When Samson was shut in at Gaza by the Philistines, the double leaves of the city gate were held together by a bar, without the lifting of which the doors could not be opened. “And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and laid hold of the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts [the upright stiles, at the bottom of which were the knuckles that turned in the threshold sockets], and plucked them up, bar [cross-bar or latch] and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron.”[674]
I have in my possession a bronze door-socket and knuckle of an ancient gate or door, unearthed from a mound in the vicinity of Ghuzzeh, the site of ἡ τύχηancient Gaza, that meets this description.
In primitive symbolism, as shown in Babylonia, Egypt, and India, the circle or ring, like this socket, represents woman.
It would be interesting, in this connection, to follow out the meanings and uses of the Greek words πυθμήν (_puthmēn_), root φυ (_phu_); and φλιή (_phliē_), doorpost, root φλι (_phli_); compare φλέω (_phleō_), φίλος (_philos_). It is evident that the twofold idea of the threshold of life, and the threshold, or sockets, of the door, is in the uses of these terms and their derivatives in earlier and later Greek. But only this suggestion can be made here.