The southernmost of the five Philistine cities and the gateway between Canaan and Egypt — which is why it appears as a boundary marker as early as the Table of Nations (Genesis 10:19) and why every empire that ever marched that coast road took it. It is the city where Samson pulled the gate off its hinges and later died between the pillars (Judges 16). ⚠ Amos charges it with the slave trade: carrying off 'a whole population' and handing them on to Edom (1:6) — a raid that emptied a place rather than a battle that took prisoners.