Corner Gate
Corner Gate is a structure mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Jerusalem. It appears across 5 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
The Corner Gate was a prominent feature of Jerusalem's ancient city wall, mentioned five times across the Old Testament in passages spanning several centuries of Israel's history. It first appears in 2 Kings 14:13 (and the parallel in 2 Chronicles 25:23), where Jehoash king of Israel broke down a four-hundred-cubit section of Jerusalem's wall from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate after his victory over Amaziah of Judah. The Corner Gate is subsequently mentioned in the prophetic books: Jeremiah 31:38 places it within a vision of Jerusalem's future restoration, promising that the city would be rebuilt for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. Zechariah 14:10 similarly envisions a transformed Jerusalem stretching from the Benjamin Gate to the Corner Gate. These prophetic references demonstrate that the Corner Gate served as a recognized boundary marker defining the city's perimeter. The gate likely stood at the northwestern corner of the old city, facing toward the hills west of Jerusalem.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Precise identification of the Corner Gate remains elusive due to the complex stratigraphy of ancient Jerusalem and centuries of construction, destruction, and rebuilding. Scholars generally place it in the northwestern sector of the Old City, possibly near the present-day Jaffa Gate area or along the northern wall. Nahman Avigad's excavations in the Jewish Quarter following 1967 uncovered sections of Iron Age II walls and towers that help define the extent of the eighth-to-seventh century BC city. The Broad Wall uncovered by Avigad, mentioned in Nehemiah 3:8, may relate to the defensive circuit referenced in the Corner Gate passages, though a direct correspondence has not been confirmed.
Verse Appearances (5)
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]