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Feasts and festivals
Feast of Booths
Hebrew Sukkot · also Tabernacles, Ingathering · 15–22 Tishri, September or October
The Feast of Booths began on the 15th day of the seventh month, after the grain was threshed and the grapes pressed (Deuteronomy 16:13), and lasted seven days, with an eighth day of assembly. It was the third pilgrimage feast and the most joyful, also called the Feast of Ingathering. People gathered fruit, palm branches, leafy boughs and willows and lived for the week in booths, rough shelters of branches, recalling the journey from Egypt (Leviticus 23:40–43). The offerings were the largest of the year: thirteen bulls on the first day, one fewer each day after.
Every seventh year the law was to be read aloud to all Israel at this feast (Deuteronomy 31:10–11), and Solomon dedicated the temple at the feast of the seventh month. After the exile the returned community built booths on rooftops, in courtyards and in the squares of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8:16). According to later Jewish sources, priests in the 1st century carried water from the Pool of Siloam to pour at the altar, and great lamps were lit in the temple courts. Jesus went up to Jerusalem for this feast (John 7:2, 10).
Key verses
On the first day you are to gather the fruit of majestic trees, the branches of palm trees, and the boughs of leafy trees and of willows of the brook. And you are to rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.You are to dwell in booths for seven days. All the native-born of Israel must dwell in booths, so that your descendants may know that I made the Israelites dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’”You are to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. And you shall rejoice in your feast—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite, as well as the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widows among you.Then Moses commanded them, “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of remission of debt, during the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes before the LORD your God at the place He will choose, you are to read this law in the hearing of all Israel.And the people went out, brought back branches, and made booths on their own rooftops, in their courtyards, in the court of the house of God, and in the squares by the Water Gate and by the Gate of Ephraim.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Feasts and Festivals of Israel: Seasonal Festivals; Feasts and Festivals of Israel: New Testament Festivals; Offerings and Sacrifices: Consecration Offerings; Tabernacles*, Feast of
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
