Three Possibilities

(Psa 100:4 KJV)  Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

(Proverbs 18 also read)

I have sung the song that goes along with this.  I thought about entering His gates.  This morning as I was reading over this in worship and meditation, I found myself wondering what “gates” (8179) we were talking about.  I come up with three possibilities.

If it were the gates of the Temple that would be wonderful thought.  The question I would have, though is when this Psalm was written.  People traditionally think of the Psalms is being written by David.  We know that some were not written by him because they say so.  Similar for the situations which would not have been around during David‘s time.  If David wrote this Psalm, the gates cannot be to the temple, because there was no temple at that time and to my knowledge the tabernacle did not have gates.

A second possibility is the gates of Jerusalem.  I would think of ceremonial processions winding their way up the hill, and into the city of God.  Think of the story of David dancing before the Lord.  That would work.

There a possibility that comes to me is that these are the gates of the New Jerusalem.  That would make this a form of prophecy, looking into the dim future.

So? We know they are gates. We know that we can enter them. We know that as we enter them we celebrate the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It doesn’t really matter when or where; we can worship now.