The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, is the third great annual pilgrimage festival when the Jewish people gather together in Jerusalem not only to remember God's provision in the Wilderness but also to look ahead to that promised Messianic age when all nations will flow to Jerusalem to worship the Lord.
All of God’s feasts are full of creativity and wonder; treasures, and promises. But in Jewish literature, Sukkot is often simply called “THE Feast”. Three times a year, all of Israel were supposed to make the trek to Jerusalem for Passover, Shavuot in the Spring, and then Sukkot in the fall. Sukkot means “shelters”, “booths”, or “tabernacles”.
This is a feast in which God instructs his people to set about making a temporary shelter or booth to camp out in for a week. But why in the world did God want us to make dens?
In his creative genius, seen not only in the natural world around us but also in the law that God himself dictated, we can see that God also knew how effective building a shelter would be to provoke thought.
He knew that this activity would help remind people of the journey that they had taken with him through the wilderness. That time of desert wandering was where the nation was forged once and for all as a community of faith, following the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Their tents were only temporary – they were traveling towards a more permanent home, where they could live with their God.
Leviticus 23:33–44 provides instructions for the Feast of Tabernacles, including the date, length, and rituals.
