Our feet are standing
Psalm 122:2
in your gates, O Jerusalem.
Our trip began in Jerusalem. We exited our shared taxi and walked into the Old City. We were staying inside the city wall! Ancient cities were typically surrounded walls for defense. However, they still needed to allow everyday traffic to flow in and out of the city. Therefore they installed gates. Most cities or towns had a single gate. Larger cities had more.
The Bible talks about the building of Jerusalem’s walls. The original city captured by David was tiny. Hezekiah did a substantial expansion, adding a wall to encompass the western hill in preparation for the Assyrian advance. Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls. The current walls were constructed in the 16th century by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. However, these walls don’t encompass the southern end of ancient Jerusalem, leaving David’s city core outside today’s walls.
Exploring the Old City of Jerusalem is fun. You can never get too lost because eventually you’ll hit a wall and can use that as a marker to get you to where you need to go. You never know what you may find along the way.
This opening was made in the wall in 1898 for the arrival of Kaiser Wilhelm.
