(16) For the gate of the court--i.e., the entrance.

An hanging.--The word is the same as that similarly translated in Exodus 26:36 and Exodus 26:37 of Exodus 26; and the description of the "hanging" is also, word for word, the same. It would contrast strongly with the plain white "sail-cloth" round the rest of the enclosure, and would clearly point out to all the place of entrance.

Verse 16. - For the gate. The word used is the common one for "gate;" but here it rather signifies "entrance." Strictly speaking, there was no "gate;" the worshippers entered by drawing aside the curtain. This was a hanging of similar material, colours, and workmanship to that which hung in front of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:36). By its contrast with the white linen screen which surrounded the rest of the court, it would show very clearly where men were to enter.

27:9-19 The tabernacle was enclosed in a court, about sixty yards long and thirty broad, formed by curtains hung upon brazen pillars, fixed in brazen sockets. Within this enclosure the priests and Levites offered the sacrifices, and thither the Jewish people were admitted. These distinctions represented the difference between the visible nominal church, and the true spiritual church, which alone has access to God, and communion with him.And for the gate of the court shall be an hanging of twenty cubits,.... Which, with the fifteen on each side, make the fifty cubits, the breadth of the court eastward, Exodus 27:13, this hanging was better than the rest, much finer and richer:

for it was of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needle work: and was of the same as the hangings for the door of the holy place, Exodus 26:36 this was a figure of Christ, and of the graces of the Spirit in him, and of his bloodshed, sufferings, and death; who is the door into the church, and to the ordinances of it, and leads on to the holy place, and even to the holy of holies, see John 10:9.

their pillars shall be four, and their sockets four: so that the pillars of this court at both sides and each end were sixty, twenty on each side, south and north, and ten at each end, west and east.