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The Feast
of Tabernacles
Overview
 The
Feast of Tabernacles is a week-long autumn harvest
festival. Tabernacles is also known as the Feast
of the Ingathering, Feast of the Booths, Sukkoth,
Succoth, or Sukkot (variations in spellings occur
because these words are transliterations of the
Hebrew word pronounced “Sue-coat”).
The two days following the festival are separate
holidays, Shemini Atzeret and Simkhat Torah, but
are commonly thought of as part of the Feast of
Tabernacles.
The Feast of Tabernacles was the
final and most important holiday of the year.
The importance of this festival is indicated by
the statement, “This is to be a lasting ordinance.”
The divine pronouncement, “I am the Lord
your God,” concludes this section on the
holidays of the seventh month. The Feast of Tabernacles
begins five days after Yom Kippur on the fifteenth
of Tishri (September or October). It is a drastic
change from one of the most solemn holidays in
our year to one of the most joyous. The word Sukkoth
means “booths,” and refers to the temporary
dwellings that Jews are commanded to live in during
this holiday, just as the Jews did in the wilderness.
The Feast of Tabernacles lasts for seven days
and ends on the twenty-first day (3x7) of the
Hebrew month of Tishri, which is Israel’s
seventh month.
This holiday has a dual significance:
historical and agricultural (just as Passover
and Pentecost). Historically, it was to be kept
in remembrance of the dwelling in tents in the
wilderness for the forty-year period during which
the children of Israel were wandering in the desert.
It is expounded in Leviticus 23:43
That your generations may know that I made the
children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I
brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the
LORD your God.
What were they to remember?
Matthew Henry’s commentary
explains,
1.) The meanness of their beginning, and the
low and desolate state out of which God advanced
that people. Note: Those that are comfortably
fixed ought often to call to mind their former
unsettled state, when they were but little in
their own eyes. 2.) The mercy of God to them,
that, when they dwelt in tabernacles, God not
only set up a tabernacle for Himself among them,
but, with the utmost care and tenderness imaginable,
hung a canopy over them, even the cloud that
sheltered them from the heat of the sun. God’s
former mercies to us and our fathers ought to
be kept in everlasting remembrance. The eighth
day was the great day of this holiday, because
then they returned to their own houses again,
and remembered how, after they had long dwelt
in tents in the wilderness, at length they came
to a happy settlement in the land of promise,
where they dwelt in goodly houses. And they
would the more sensibly value and be thankful
for the comforts and conveniences of their houses
when they had been seven days dwelling in booths.
It is good for those that have ease and plenty
sometimes to learn what it is to endure hardness.
They were to keep this holiday in thankfulness
to God for all the increase of the year; however,
the emphasis is that Israel’s life rested
upon redemption which in its ultimate meaning
is the forgiveness of sin. This fact separates
this holiday from the harvest festivals of the
neighboring nations whose roots lay in the mythological
activity of the gods.
Was the first Thanksgiving a Feast of Tabernacles
Celebration?
Many Americans, upon seeing a
decorated sukkah for the first time, remark on
how much the sukkah (and the holiday generally)
reminds them of Thanksgiving. The American pilgrims,
who originated the Thanksgiving holiday, were
deeply religious people. As they were trying to
find a way to express their thanks for their survival
and for the harvest, it is quite possible that
they looked to the Bible (Leviticus 23:39) for
an appropriate way of celebrating and based their
holiday in part on the Feast of Tabernacles.
Note: celebrating Thanksgiving
on the third Thursday of November was established
by the American government and may not necessarily
coincide with the pilgrim’s first observance.
The Feast of
Tabernacles
Overview | Bible
Times | Jewish
Customs |
Messiah
in Taberncles | Birth
of Christ | Celebrating
Tabernacles |
Building a Sukkoth I
Sukkah
Craf
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