Of Gates in the Ground and Castles in the Air: A Case of Biblical Unreal Estate

ABSTRACT

The latter part of Psalm 24 describes the personified gates of Jerusalem as raising themselves up in order to allow the King of Glory to en-ter. This, in addition to the rest of the strong mythical overtones of the psalm, creates an image of architecture coming alive to join in the celebratory entry of the divine ruler.

There are numerous, but no definitive, suggestions as to the identity of who or what is supposed to be entering the gates and under what circum-stances as well as how the raising gates are to be understood. In this essay it is argued that the psalm only supplies half the data and that it forms the optimis-tic complementary ending to the anguished cry of despair of Lam 2,8–9. Ap-plying critical spatial analysis to these two texts, in addition to other support-ing material, will not only show that one is a response to the other, but may also provide a more secure dating for the psalm and its social setting as well as a clearer understanding of the specific metaphor of personified architec-ture.