New Gate
New 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 2 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
The New Gate appears in the Old Testament as a significant entrance to the Jerusalem Temple complex. In Jeremiah 26:10, when the prophet Jeremiah delivered his famous Temple sermon warning of Jerusalem's destruction, the princes of Judah assembled at the "entry of the New Gate of the LORD's house" to hear the case against him. This location served as a place of judicial proceedings, where religious and civil leaders gathered to render judgment. The gate's designation as "new" suggests it was either a recently constructed addition or a renovated entrance to the Temple precincts, likely built during one of the periods of Temple renovation. Jeremiah 36:10 also references this area when Baruch read Jeremiah's scroll in the chamber of Gemariah near the upper court at the New Gate. The gate thus became a setting for some of the most dramatic confrontations between prophetic truth and institutional religion in the late Judahite monarchy, serving as a threshold between sacred space and the world of political power.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The precise location of the biblical New Gate within the Temple complex remains debated among scholars. It should not be confused with the modern New Gate in Jerusalem's Old City walls, which was opened in 1889 during the Ottoman period. The original New Gate likely stood in the inner court of Solomon's Temple, possibly on the north or upper side of the Temple precincts. Archaeological excavations around the Temple Mount have been limited due to the site's religious sensitivity. Some scholars associate it with construction projects during the reign of Jotham, who built the Upper Gate of the Temple (2 Kings 15:35), though this identification remains uncertain.
Verse Appearances (2)
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]