The Feast of Tabernacles: A Celebration of YaHWaH's Presence

The Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of "Booths" or "Sukkot", is the great harvest celebration of YaHWaH's calendar. It begins on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, five days after the Day of Atonement ("Day of Atonement"), and lasts seven days. The first day is a holy convocation and a day of rest. Where Atonement is a day of affliction, Tabernacles is a command to rejoice. Once sin is dealt with, YaHWaH dwells with His people.

The command is given in Leviticus 23:33-43, Numbers 29:12-34, and Deuteronomy 16:13-15 (Leviticus 23:40-43, NASB 1995):

• Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your Elohim for seven days.

• You shall thus celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month.

• You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths,

• so that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your Elohim.

The booth is a temporary shelter, a reminder that Israel crossed the wilderness with nothing permanent but YaHWaH Himself. He fed them, led them, and dwelled among them in the tabernacle. Deuteronomy 16:14-15 widens the table: the son, the daughter, the servant, the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow were all to rejoice, “so that you will be altogether joyful.” Every seventh year the Law was read aloud to the whole nation during this feast (Deuteronomy 31:10-13).