Wall

Walls in biblical times served defensive, social, and symbolic purposes. Fortified city walls distinguished urban settlements from open villages (Leviticus 25:29; Numbers 13:28; Deuteronomy 3:5) and were the primary defense against military assault. Ancient Israelite cities were protected by massive walls — archaeological evidence at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer reveals Solomonic-era walls several metres thick. The conquest of Jericho, where the walls "fell down flat" at the trumpet blast (Joshua 6:20), demonstrated that divine power supersedes human fortification. Nehemiah's rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls (Nehemiah 1–6) is the most extended wall-construction narrative in Scripture. Walls also figure metaphorically: God promises to be "a wall of fire" around Jerusalem (Zechariah 2:5), and Paul declares in Ephesians 2:14 that Christ has broken down "the middle wall of partition" — the dividing wall in the temple that excluded Gentiles from the inner courts — as a metaphor for the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in one body.