I had rather be a doorkeeper. — Better, I had rather wait on the threshold, as not worthy (LXX. and Vulgate, “be rejected in scorn”) to enter the precincts. The idea of “doorkeeper,” however, though not necessarily involved in the Hebrew word, is suggested in a Korahite psalm, since the Korahites were “keepers of the gates of the tabernacle, and keepers of the entry.” Compare with this wish the words which a Greek poet puts into the mouth of his hero, who sweeps the threshold of Apollo’s temple:
“A pleasant task, O Phoebus, I discharge,
Before thine house in reverence of thy seat
Of prophecy, an honoured task to me.”
EURIPIDES, Ion, 128.