Feast of Tabernacles: The Booths

Feasts of Israel Series: Part 24

Throughout Jerusalem, the people celebrated the seventh and last of the great feasts of Israel on the year’s sacred calendar. While there were a variety of sacrifices and rituals appointed for the Feast of Tabernacles, the most immediately conspicuous to anyone entering the city would have been the somewhat ramshackle-looking shelters filling up the streets.

God had commanded His people to construct these little tabernacles or booths out of various types of branches. For the seven days of the feast, they were to step out of their perfectly good houses and set up camp in temporary dwellings. (See Leviticus 23:39–44.)

As with the other feasts, Tabernacles points both backward and forward. You’ll remember from previous blogs that Passover memorialized Israel’s escape from physical slavery under a deliverer called Moses. But it also looked forward to a coming Deliverer who would be greater, bringing salvation from the slavery of sin itself. Pentecost recalled the thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai when God wrote His Law on tablets of stone. At the same time, it foretold a future date when fire would blaze atop human heads instead of mountains, and shouts of praise would outdo angelic trumpets, as He etched the Law in hearts of flesh (Acts 2).

The Feast of Tabernacles is something of a puzzle, however. While the makeshift nature of its booths points back to the tents of Israel’s wilderness years, we don’t yet see a parallel in the life of Christ or His church. So, what might be its future focus? There’s a mystery to unwrap here and God has dropped us hints in all the different parts of the feast. We’ll be looking at some of those in future blogs, but let’s start by considering what the booths have to tell us.

The Message of the Booths

As we noticed, the booths initially point us back to Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Yet prophets who appeared long after that journey suggest something similar will occur again. “But I am the Lord your God, ever since the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast” (Hosea 12:9).

So far, we don’t see a whole-scale pilgrimage anything like the exodus from Egypt. So, what should we be looking for?

One inescapable feature of these little tabernacles is their short-term nature. Leviticus 23:40 describes the type of material to use in their construction but says nothing about securing them to the ground. The booths are destined for the scrap heap once the feast is over while the people move into a permanent dwelling place.

Nothing says, “this is not my forever home” like a house without foundations. And nothing says man’s time on earth is finite than living in a body with a “use by” date. One forward-looking message of the booths echoes Psalm 103:15–16: “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” We are that grass, those flowers. Our days are numbered so we’d be wise to remember that.

The Good News of the Booths

While the temporary nature of the booths cautions us to be circumspect about our present, it also encourages us to look forward with hope. It’s true most of the Feast of Tabernacles takes place during those seven days under the stars. But the celebration isn’t over until the eighth day when the people leave their booths behind.

Just as the first day of each new week is known as the eighth day, and the beginning of a new agricultural season starts in the eighth month, the eighth day of this festival marks a new beginning. Temporary homes give way to dwellings with firm foundations.

Long before the New Testament, Abraham expected just such an eighth day. When God settled Him in Canaan, Abe lived there as a foreigner and temporary resident. He knew the land was his by promise, but somehow he knew his time in the physical acreage was only a partial fulfillment of God’s purpose. His dirt-based home would one day give way to a more permanent place—a city “whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:8–10).

We all dwell in booths similar to those in the Feast of Tabernacles. Ours are tents of flesh with footings of dirt. The good news of this feast’s tabernacles is in what they foreshadow. One day we’ll break camp and move into a place whose foundations are permanent. We’ll no longer be “strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” In our new dwelling place, Jesus Christ will be the chief cornerstone and we the living stones “being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19–22 NKJV).

This final feast points us toward a more wonderful type of eighth day–the time when we relinquish these tents of flesh to obtain something better.

Promise of the Booths

Sounds lovely, of course. But in the meantime, we’re stuck fulfilling the “seven days” appointed to us. And this earthly life can feel as frail as booths made of nothing more than boughs tied together.

What hope does the Feast of Tabernacles offer for right now?

The Hebrew word for “booth” is sukkah—meaning covering or protection. Leviticus 23:40 describes the building material for these little tabernacles as: “the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook.”

Wood often represents humanity in Scripture. At first glance, we might think God is only emphasizing our fragile nature—our insufficient self-protection. However, the booths of the Feast of Tabernacles weren’t fashioned from dead wood lying about the fields. They were made of branches cut from living trees.

There is, of course, another Branch–a living one–whose name fills the prophecies. He is the covering, hovering, protective, promised Messiah. “Behold, the Man whose name is the BRANCH! From His place He shall branch out, and He shall build the temple of the Lord” (Zechariah 6:12–13 NKJV).

The people of Israel shuffling out of Egypt probably looked like a group of these flimsy booths as they wandered into the wilderness. Though untested in battle and untried in self-government, they not only survived the trek, but under the protection of the Branch, they conquered their way to the Promised Land.

However frail we may feel, Jesus, our living Branch, covers us with His unbeatable protection. He is our sukkah, sheltering us no matter how long our “week” of life lasts. We can handle every obstacle with confidence, knowing our eighth day is ahead–our personal fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles that is to come.

“In that day the Branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious; and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and appealing. . . . For over all the glory there will be a covering. And there will be a tabernacle for shade in the daytime from the heat, for a place of refuge, and for a shelter from storm and rain” (Isaiah 4:2, 5–6 NKJV).