These are the scant remains of King Solomon’s gate at Gezer (mentioned in 1 Kings 9:15). The gate featured six chambers: three rooms on either side of the entrance corridor. In peacetime, these rooms were ideal for town business (Ruth 4:1-12), and in wartime for the army. The gate was high quality for its day, with a water drainage system in the corridor. This would have been obscured by paving stones during the gate’s heyday.
Eventually, Solomon’s Gezer gate came to a fiery end, likely burned by Pharaoh Shishak’s army (1 Kings 14:25). Identical gates have been found at Hazor and Megiddo – two other cities Solomon fortified.
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