The Big Picture:
The Festival of Tabernacles is a seven-day long event, with another celebration on the eighth day. The name Sukkot comes from the plural of sukkah, meaning "booth" or "tabernacle" in Hebrew. This Festival is partially described in Leviticus 23:33-43.
Leviticus 23:33-34, 41-43:
"The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the people of Israel, saying: On the fifteenth day of this seventh month, and lasting seven days, there shall be the festival of booths to the LORD. ... You shall keep it as a festival to the LORD seven days in the year; you shall keep it in the seventh month as a statute forever throughout your generations. You shall live in booths for seven days; all that are citizens in Israel shall live in booths, so that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."
The Festival of Tabernacles (also called the Festival of Booths) was one of three pilgrimage festivals for the Israelites, the other two being the Festival of Unleavened Bread (the days after Passover) and the Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost. During these pilgrimage festivals, all male Jews were required to journey to Jerusalem in order to worship the LORD as one people. You can read more about the pilgrimage festivals in Deuteronomy 16:13-17.
In this particular festival, the Jewish people built booths, temporary shelters, and ate and slept in those booths rather than in their homes. Not only the pilgrims did this; all Jews were required to live in booths made for this occasion, even if they lived in Jerusalem, or were unable to travel for the festival.
We will celebrate Sukkot from this Sunday, September 27 through next Sunday, October 4th, the actual dates of Sukkot this year.
Dust of the Rabbi:
Getting Into the Rhythm of Jesus
God ordained this festival to remind us of our heritage and history. Today our congregation lives in one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on earth, and most of our members live in warm, comfortable homes. Yet we are not a people who were always firmly established; we were wandering exiles who lived in the wilderness in tents. From the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who lived as nomads their entire lives, to the Israelites wandering the desert for 40 years after the exodus, we are a people who have experienced exile. God calls us to remember our history especially in the safety of our present. Consider what it would mean for you to truly be to be nomadic: to possess no land, no security, and no inheritance. Is it not evident that we as American Christians particularly need the reminder of this experience?
Like Abraham and Moses, Jesus lived a nomadic lifestyle: sharing a common purse with the disciples, claiming no home of His own, constantly on the move from place to place. In the Gospel of John, when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem for this pilgrimage festival, he says to the crowds: "the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil." In the midst of this celebration of the Festival of Booths, Jesus reminds us that being separate from the world - as exiles, nomads, aliens - is a good thing.
Many of today's Jews celebrate Sukkot by building a booth in their yard, and eating and/or sleeping there as a family for a week. Even the slight shift from house to yard can radically transform the way we perceive our world and ourselves. What would it mean for you to remember the experience of the exile? How would your relationship with God change if you had less "security" in your day-to-day life?
Extras:
The Festival of Booths appears in many places throughout Scripture. The Prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 14:16-19) describes a day after the judgment of the LORD, where all nations, not just Israelites, will come to Jerusalem to together celebrate Sukkot in God's holy city.
Sukkot is also sometimes referred to as the Festival of Ingathering (for example, in Exodus 23:16). This is because each of the pilgrimage festivals also have major agricultural significance in the life of the Hebrews. More to follow on this next week!