Locks in the Bible are ordinary, and they often show up in the middle of a story. In Judges 3, Ehud shuts the doors of a king’s upper room and “locked them,” and the servants wait outside, embarrassed, until they fetch a key. Nehemiah 3 counts locks among the fittings of the rebuilt city gates, where “the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof” were set up. In the Song of Solomon, a lover rises to open the door, and her hands touch the lock. Judges 3 is the liveliest of these scenes.
6 verses
Then Ehud went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlour upon him, and locked them.
When he was gone out, his servants came; and when they saw that, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked, they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.
And they tarried till they were ashamed: and, behold, he opened not the doors of the parlour; therefore they took a key, and opened them: and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth.
The valley gate repaired Hanun, and the inhabitants of Zanoah; they built it, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof, and a thousand cubits on the wall unto the dung gate.
But the dung gate repaired Malchiah the son of Rechab, the ruler of part of Bethhaccerem; he built it, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof.
I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
The Hebrews usually secured their doors by bars of wood or iron (Isa. 45:2; 1 Kings 4:3). These were the locks originally used, and were opened and shut by large keys applied through an opening in the outside (Judg. 3:24). (See KEY.)
Lock of hair (Judg. 16:13, 19; Ezek. 8:3; Num. 6:5, etc.).
William Smith, 1884
Where European locks have not been introduced, the locks of eastern houses are usually of wood, and consist of a partly hollow bolt from fourteen inches to two feet long for external doors or gates, or from seven to nine inches for interior doors. The bold passes through a groove in a piece attached to the door into a socket in the door-post.