Some of the oldest words of worship in the Bible are shaped like a question shouted at a gate. Psalm 24 ends with a scene: a King approaches, a herald cries for the ancient gates to open, and a voice from the gate calls back a challenge — Who is this? The whole psalm is built to make you answer, and the answer it gives is the center of everything: the King of glory is the LORD Himself.
The cry at the gate
“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle… The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.” — Psalm 24:7-10
This is an antiphonal liturgy — call and response. One voice commands the gates to open for the King who is coming in; another voice, as a gatekeeper would, challenges: “Who is this King of glory?” The demand is not ignorance — it is the setup for the proclamation. And it is asked twice, so the answer can ring out twice: the LORD, mighty in battle… the LORD of hosts. The point of the question is the identity it forces into the open.
Who is asking — and why
At the plain level, the challenge is voiced by the gatekeepers of Zion as a festal procession brings the ark, the symbol of God’s presence, up to the holy hill. But the church heard something greater in it. In the ancient Christian reading, these are the words of the angelic hosts at heaven’s everlasting doors, spoken as the risen, victorious Christ ascends toward them. The escorting angels cry, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates”; the hosts at the gate answer, “Who is this King of glory?” — and the reason for the wonder is that the One coming up had gone down: into flesh, into the cross, into the grave. The answer silences every doubt: the LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory.
David knew these gates
And the man who wrote this knew exactly what he was describing. Psalm 24 is David’s, and it was most likely composed for the day he brought the ark of the LORD up into Jerusalem — the ark, the very seat of God’s presence, carried through the city gates to Zion with trumpets, shouting, and David himself dancing before it (2 Samuel 6; 1 Chronicles 15-16). When he cries, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates… and the King of glory shall come in,” he is watching it happen: the LORD, enthroned above the ark, entering His city through its opened gates.
David knew those gates from both sides, too. He knew the triumph of a victorious king coming home through them from battle — and he knew the grief of going out of them, weeping, barefoot, when he fled from Absalom (2 Samuel 15), and then the joy of being brought back again in triumph once Absalom was defeated, the people bringing the king home across Jordan and up to the city (2 Samuel 19). He understood in his own body what it means for a king to come home through the gates of the city. So the psalm is not cold liturgy; it is David pouring his deepest experience — the presence of God entering, the king returning in triumph — into words that would only find their fullness when great David’s greater Son ascended through the gates of heaven, and will one day return through the gates of the city He wept over.
And that city was no ordinary capital. Jerusalem was the very place God chose to put His name — “the city which I have chosen me to put my name there” (1 Kings 11:36), “the place which the LORD your God shall choose… to put his name there” (Deuteronomy 12:5), “I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there” (2 Chronicles 6:6). So the cry, “the King of glory shall come in,” is more than a royal welcome: it is the LORD returning to the dwelling of His own Name. And that is the note that binds this psalm to the whole of Scripture — for the Name God set in that city was, at the last, revealed in Jesus (see The Name of God). The King of glory who enters the gates, and the Name enthroned within them, are one.
The King of glory goes up
That is the scene in the engraving above. Having risen from the dead, Jesus led His disciples out, “and it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51); “while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). The everlasting doors lifted their heads, and the King of glory came in. Psalm 24 had opened by asking who is worthy to make that ascent — “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?… He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (Psalm 24:3-4) — and only One ever answered that in full. The sinless King ascends the holy hill in triumph, and opens the way for His people to follow.
The King of glory is the LORD — and the LORD is Jesus
Here is why this psalm is such a treasure. Its answer is unambiguous: the King of glory is “the LORD of hosts” — YHWH, the covenant name of God. And the New Testament sets that same crown on Jesus. Paul calls Him “the Lord of glory” whom they crucified (1 Corinthians 2:8); James calls Him “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (James 2:1). The King of glory who ascends the hill of the LORD is the LORD — and He wears the face of Jesus. This is the heart of the Name of God: the LORD of the prophets, the Saviour of the cross, and the King of glory are one.
The King who went up will come again
The ascension is never left as a farewell. The same angels who watched Him rise turned the moment into a promise: “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The King of glory who passed through heaven’s gates will pass back through them to us. And when He comes, the prophets place His approach from the east: “the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east… and the glory of the LORD came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the east” (Ezekiel 43:2-4); His “feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives” (Zechariah 14:4), the hill just east of the city. What Psalm 24 sings at heaven’s gates, the whole earth will one day echo at its own: Lift up your heads; the King of glory shall come in.
And there is a last gate in the story. The city that descends from God, the New Jerusalem, has twelve gates, every one of them a single pearl, with an angel at each (Revelation 21:12, 21). But of these gates one thing is said that was never said of the old: “the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there” (Revelation 21:25). The earthly eastern gate was sealed once the LORD had entered; the heavenly city needs no such seal, because the King of glory has come in to stay. The ancient cry — “Lift up your heads, O ye gates” — finds its final answer in a city whose gates never come down again.
And the King of glory is a Lamb
Hold the psalm’s own answer in your mind — “the LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle” — and then hear what John was told in heaven. Weeping because no one was found worthy to open the scroll, he heard, “Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda… hath prevailed.” He turned to see the Lion — and saw instead “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Revelation 5:5-6). The King of glory, the warrior LORD, prevailed not by striking the blow but by taking it. The wounds are His throne’s own credentials.
That is why, in the city whose gates never shut, there is no temple building at all: “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it,” and “the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:22-23). The One enthroned at the center of glory still bears the marks of the slaughter. What a notion — and what a King: the LORD of hosts, mighty in battle, is the Lamb that was slain, and that is His glory.
The honest part
A few honest notes, so the wonder rests on solid ground. Psalm 24 in its own setting is a temple entrance liturgy, probably sung as the ark was carried up to Zion; the ascension and the return are the fuller meanings the church has heard in it, read in the light of Christ — rich and ancient, but typological rather than a one-to-one prediction. The picture of the return through Jerusalem’s sealed Eastern (or “Golden”) Gate is a cherished tradition drawn from Ezekiel’s vision of the glory entering by the east gate (Ezekiel 43-44) and from Zechariah 14; it is a reasonable inference, but Ezekiel’s gate belongs to his visionary temple, so tying it to the present Ottoman-era wall is interpretation, not a stated verse. What is not in doubt is the psalm’s own answer, and it is enough: the King of glory is the LORD of hosts — and He is Jesus. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).