“Has torn down the dividing wall of hostility”
For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An abstract metaphor for prejudice.
The cultural key
There was a literal wall. The soreg, the barrier around the temple's inner courts, posted with inscriptions warning that any Gentile passing it would bear responsibility for his own ensuing death; two of those inscription stones survive, and a riot over that exact barrier nearly killed Paul (see the Acts 21:28 entry). Whether the letter's first readers pictured the soreg specifically is debated, but Paul had personal cause to: he was in Roman custody because of that wall when the letter tradition places him writing.
Recovered meaning
'Peace' here is demolition: the one wall in the world whose crossing carried a posted death sentence declared down, with the hostility it organized. The Gentile who once died for entering is now 'a fellow citizen, a member of the household.'