Psalms 9:13 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Consider my trouble, to wit, compassionately and effectually, so as to bring me out of it. From the gates of death; from the brink or mouth of the grave, into which I was dropping, being as near death as a man is to the city that is come to the very gates of it. And so the phrase is used Psalms 107:18 Isaiah 38:10, and in other authors of whom see my Latin Synopsis. Gates elsewhere signify power and policy, because the gates of cities were places both of counsel and strength; but the gates of death are never so taken in Scripture.