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The King of Glory: who is this King?

A crowd climbs a hill, shouts at a stone gateway to open wide, and a voice from the wall calls back a question that still gets asked: who is this?

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  • Name 48 of 70The King of Glory
  • HebrewMelekh ha-kavod
  • In plain wordsThe King whose glory outweighs everything
  • Where to find itPsalm 24:7 to 10, at the gates of Jerusalem

The King of glory is the title Psalm 24 gives to the LORD as He comes through the gates of His city. The name means the King whose greatness carries more weight than anything else in the world. The psalm asks the question twice, Who is this King of glory?, and answers it with a shout. It is one of the most dramatic moments in the whole book of Psalms.

A song for a procession

To feel the force of this psalm, it helps to know a sad story that came first. In the days of the priest Eli, Israel carried the ark of the covenant into battle as if it were a good luck charm. The ark was the gold-covered chest that held the tablets of the Law, and it stood for God's presence with His people. The Philistines won the battle and captured it. When a grandson of Eli was born that day, his mother named him Ichabod, which means "no glory," and she said The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken (1 Samuel 4:22).

Years later, King David captured Jerusalem and made it his capital. He wanted the ark there too. After one failed attempt, he tried again, and this time the day turned into a national celebration:

So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

2 Samuel 6:15

Psalm 24 is called a psalm of David. The Bible never says it was written for that exact day, but many Bible teachers through the centuries have linked the two, because the psalm reads like the words of a march up a hill. It opens by reminding everyone who owns the world: The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof (Psalm 24:1). Then it asks who is fit to climb God's hill, and answers, He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart (Psalm 24:4).

Then the marchers reach the gates.

The sun rising over a calm lake with hills

The call and the answer at the gate

Here the psalm becomes a conversation. One voice calls out to the old stone gateway, and another voice, like a guard on the wall, calls back.

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.

Psalm 24:7-8

The singers tell the gates to lift their heads, as if the top of the doorway were too low for the One who is coming. It is poetry, the way you might tell a mountain to bow. The first answer points to what the people had seen God do: He fights for them and wins.

Then the whole exchange happens again, and the second answer climbs higher:

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.

Psalm 24:9-10

The LORD of hosts means the Lord of armies, the Commander of every power in heaven and on earth (see the LORD of Hosts page). The psalm ends with Selah, a Hebrew word that probably marks a pause in the music. After an answer like that, a pause makes sense. Nothing more needs to be said.

Melekh ha-kavod: why glory means weight

In Hebrew the title is melekh ha-kavod. Melekh is the common Hebrew word for a king. Ha means "the." Kavod is the word for glory.

Kavod is the part worth slowing down for. Strong's dictionary explains that its basic meaning is weight, used in a good sense for splendor and honor. In Hebrew thinking, glory is not just shine on the outside. It is heaviness, the kind of worth that makes a person matter. English has the same idea when we say someone "carries a lot of weight." When the King of glory walks in, everything else in the room feels light.

Notice too that the gates are called everlasting doors. The Hebrew word there is olam, which points to a time so long ago or so far ahead that you cannot see its edge. The gates of Jerusalem looked ancient to the people of David's day. Yet even those old gates had to stand tall for a King older than they were.

The exact phrase King of glory appears only in this psalm, five times in four verses, like a drumbeat. The Bible uses close cousins elsewhere. Psalm 29:3 says the God of glory thundereth, and in the New Testament Paul writes that if the rulers of this world had understood God's plan, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). That one line tells you how early Christians read Psalm 24. They believed the King at the gate had come in person.

Key King James verses for the King of glory

Read these alongside Psalm 24 to see the same King from other angles:

The LORD sitteth upon the flood; yea, the LORD sitteth King for ever.

Psalm 29:10

The storm in Psalm 29 is loud and frightening, but the King of glory sits above the flood like a ruler on a throne.

And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?

Matthew 21:10

On the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the city asked the gatekeeper's question all over again.

Opening the gates of your own life

Ask yourself a simple question: what feels heavy in my life right now? For most people the answer is money, grades, what others think, a relationship, a problem with no fix in sight. Those things pile up until they seem to weigh more than God. The King of glory changes the scale. When you see how great He is, the other weights do not vanish, but they stop running your life.

Psalm 24 also invites you to think of your life as a city with gates. Some doors are wide open to God. Others stay locked: your phone, your free time, your plans for the future, a habit you would rather He not see. He will not smash those doors down. He is the King, and He asks to be let in.

And if your home or your heart feels like an Ichabod place, where the glory has left, remember how the story turned. The ark came back to Jerusalem with shouting and trumpets. God knows the way home.

  • Name one area of your life you have kept closed to God, and invite Him in by name.
  • Read Psalm 24 out loud, maybe with a friend taking the guard's lines.
  • The next time worry feels heavy, ask yourself whether it outweighs the King of glory.

The King of Glory is name 48 of the 70 in the book. Before that comes A Sun and Shield, and next the prophet Jeremiah calls God the King of Nations. You can see all the titles together on the names of God in the Bible page.

Get the book: the full chapter on The King of Glory

The King of Glory chapter in the book takes this name much further: the Greek wording of Psalm 24, the day the crowds in Jerusalem asked the very same question about Jesus, why the church has long heard this psalm at the Ascension, the hard question of who can stand in God's holy place, and a prayer for opening every door of your life.

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  • The GreekHow this name was carried into the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament.
  • The rest of the BibleWhere the name leads from here, all the way into the New Testament.
  • Hard questionsThe things people wonder about this name and do not always ask.
  • A prayerWords to pray this name back to God.

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Questions people ask

Who is the King of glory in Psalm 24?

The psalm answers its own question. The first time, the reply is The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. The second time, it goes even higher: The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Christians also see Jesus as the King of glory, since the New Testament calls Him the Lord of glory.

What does King of glory mean?

In Hebrew it is melekh ha-kavod. Melekh means king. Kavod means glory, and at its root it carries the idea of weight. So the King of glory is the King whose worth and greatness carry more weight than anything else.

Where is King of glory in the Bible?

The exact phrase appears only in Psalm 24, five times in verses 7 to 10. Similar titles appear elsewhere, such as the God of glory in Psalm 29:3 and the Lord of glory in 1 Corinthians 2:8 and James 2:1.

What does Lift up your heads, O ye gates mean?

It is poetry. The singers speak to the city gates as if they were alive and tell them to stand taller, as though the doorway were too low for the great King coming through. The line is Lift up your heads, O ye gates.

When was Psalm 24 written?

The heading calls it a psalm of David. The Bible does not say what day it was first sung. Many Bible teachers connect it with the day David brought the ark of the covenant up to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6), but that is a likely setting, not a stated fact.