Appointed time
סֻכּוֹת
Tabernacles
Seven days living in temporary shelters, five days after the day of atonement. The text calls it rejoicing, and means it as a command.
In one minute
A week spent living in a rough shelter you build outside, right after the harvest is safely in. Branches are gathered on the first day, and an eighth day of assembly closes it. The stated reason is memory: so later generations know their ancestors lived in shelters when they came out of Egypt.
Why this matters to anyone
The design is almost comic in its timing. You bring in the year's harvest, you have never been more secure, and then you are told to go and live in a hut with a leaky roof for a week. Prosperity is the moment the tradition chooses to remind you how recently you had nothing.
It is also the one festival the Bible explicitly commands you to enjoy. Not endure, not observe: rejoice. And it then specifies who has to be included in the rejoicing, which stops it becoming a private good mood.
Read the text
Start with the words themselves, before anyone explains them to you.
The harvest is in and the year's most solemn day has just passed. Into that gap Leviticus puts a week of living outdoors in booths, with branches gathered on the first day and an eighth day of assembly at the end.
The reason given is memory: so that later generations know that the people lived in booths when they came out of Egypt. A settled population is asked to spend a week being temporarily unsettled on purpose.
“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying: On the fifteenth day of this seventh month is the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD.”
“Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are home-born in Israel shall dwell in booths; that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”
“Seven days shalt thou keep a feast unto the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD shall choose; because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the work of thy hands, and thou shalt be altogether joyful.”
Learn three words
You do not need Hebrew to read well, but these few change what you can see.
- סֻכָּהsukkahbooth, shelter
- Plural sukkot, which gives the festival its name. The same word is used for shelters for animals and for soldiers.
- אָסִיףasifingathering
- The older name in Exodus 23:16, describing the harvest rather than the shelters.
- שִׂמְחָהsimchahgladness, rejoicing
- The word behind the command to rejoice. It denotes public celebration rather than private contentment.
Notice what is odd
The details that do not quite fit are usually where the meaning is.
Rejoicing as an instruction
Deuteronomy 16:15 does not describe joy, it commands it. This is the one place the Torah tells people how to feel and then tells them who to include.
Branches, gathered on the first day
Leviticus 23:40 names boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook. Which species those are has been discussed ever since.
An eighth day, added on
Leviticus 23:36 sets a solemn assembly on the eighth day, outside the seven. It belongs to the feast and stands apart from it at the same time.
The one feast with a foreign future
Zechariah 14:16 imagines the nations coming up to keep this particular festival. Of all of them, this is the one the prophets picture other peoples joining.
How it is kept
What the text requires, and what tradition added afterwards. Worth telling apart in both directions.
- In the Bible
- Seven days in booths, branches taken on the first day, offerings across the week, an assembly on the first and eighth days, and rejoicing that includes the household, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow.
- Today
- Many Jewish households build a sukkah, a temporary hut with a roof of cut branches through which the sky is visible, and eat in it for the week. The four species of Leviticus 23:40 are held together and waved. Both practices grow directly out of the biblical text.
- If you want to understand it
- Eat one meal outdoors under something you built badly. The lesson is not in the reading, it is in the draught.
Questions to sit with
Do not answer these quickly. A study that ends in a better question has gone further than one that ends in a tidy answer.
- 01
Why place a week of deliberate impermanence immediately after the harvest is safely gathered?
- 02
Nehemiah 8 says the people had not kept the feast this way since the days of Joshua. What had been lost?
- 03
Can rejoicing be commanded? What would it mean to obey that command badly?
Common questions
Open any that apply to you. Skipping this step is fine.
What is a sukkah?
A temporary shelter, roofed with cut vegetation loose enough to see stars through. The impermanence is the requirement, not a shortcut.
Why does it come right after the day of atonement?
The text does not explain the sequence, but the effect is unmistakable: the year's most severe day is followed within a week by its most joyful one.
Is this the same as the harvest festival in other traditions?
It is an autumn ingathering festival, and it shares that much with harvest celebrations everywhere. What is distinctive is the instruction to move out of your house while celebrating your security.
What is the eighth day?
Leviticus 23:36 adds a closing assembly the day after the seven. Jewish practice treats it as a festival in its own right, and pairs it with a celebration of finishing and restarting the annual cycle of Torah reading.
Go further
Pick the one that matches the time you actually have.
Ten minutes
Read Leviticus 23:33 to 43 and notice where the reason for the booths is finally given.
An evening
Add Deuteronomy 16:13 to 15 on rejoicing, and Nehemiah 8:13 to 18, where the festival is rediscovered from the text.
A week
Read Ecclesiastes, which Jewish practice reads during this festival: the most cheerful week of the year paired with the most sceptical book in the Bible.
Every passage on this page
- Exodus 23:16
- Leviticus 23:33 to 43
- Numbers 29:12 to 38
- Deuteronomy 16:13 to 15
- 1 Kings 8:2 and 65
- Nehemiah 8:13 to 18
- Zechariah 14:16 to 19
For a method you can use on any passage, see the method, or check the calendar for what is next.
Check yourself
Four questions, answered by clicking. You get the reason either way, so being wrong is useful.
Question 1 of 4
What are people told to do for seven days?