Old Gate
Old 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 Old Gate (also translated as the "Jeshanah Gate" or "Gate of the Old City") appears in the book of Nehemiah as one of the gates repaired during the reconstruction of Jerusalem's walls following the Babylonian exile. In Nehemiah 3:6, the Old Gate was repaired by Joiada son of Paseah and Meshullam son of Besodeiah, who "laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars." The gate appears again in Nehemiah 12:39 during the great dedication ceremony of the completed walls, when two large choirs processed in opposite directions around the city, with one procession passing by the Old Gate. The Hebrew name Sha'ar ha-Yeshanah may indicate a gate leading toward the town of Jeshanah, or it may simply mean the gate was ancient even in Nehemiah's time, perhaps dating to pre-exilic construction. The gate's inclusion in both the repair narrative and the dedication procession underscores its importance in the restored city's defensive and ceremonial infrastructure, symbolizing the continuity between pre-exilic Jerusalem and the renewed post-exilic community.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The precise location of the Old Gate within ancient Jerusalem's fortification system remains a matter of scholarly discussion. It is generally placed along the northern section of the city wall, possibly near the northwestern corner of the ancient city. Some scholars identify it with the area near the present-day Damascus Gate or slightly to its west, where remains of earlier fortifications have been found. Nahman Avigad's excavations in the Jewish Quarter during the 1970s uncovered segments of the "Broad Wall" dating to King Hezekiah's time (late 8th century BCE), which may relate to the broader fortification system of which the Old Gate was a part. Kathleen Kenyon's earlier excavations also identified Iron Age wall segments in the area. The layered nature of Jerusalem's archaeology makes definitive identification challenging, as successive building periods have obscured earlier structures.
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]