The Festival of Sukkot recently passed. My children had great fun sleeping in the Sukkah. Sukkot has many names in Scripture:
· The Feast of Tabernacles.[i]
· The Feast of Ingathering.[ii]
· The Feast.[iii]
· Feast of the Lord.[iv]
Scripture supplies nearly all of the pertinent facts of Sukkot, the feast of booths of tabernacles in Leviticus 23:33-43. Numbers 29:12-38 specifies the offerings on the occasion of the festival of Sukkot, and Deuteronomy 16:13-15 specifies the use of the booth. [v]
According to the passage in Leviticus, the festival was set to be celebrated on the 15th day of Seventh month. It is celebrated over seven days. The first is a Sabbath and no work is allowed. On that day, boughs from beautiful trees, willows are to be used to celebrate a memorial of when God made Israel dwell in Sukkot during their journey from Egypt. On each day of the feast, an offering made by fire is to be offered to God. The eighth day is also a Sabbath and work is also prohibited on that day. The commandment to observe this feast is everlasting.
The sacrifices in Numbers 29:12-38 are unique in three ways[vi]:
a) They include offerings to invoker protection for the gentile nations
b) The offerings are slightly different for each day of the festival.
c) There in a special water libation.
Deuteronomy 16:13-15 lists all that should take part in the feast of Tabernacles. Everyone is to take part. It is a celebration of God's provision at harvest time.
The Artscroll Chumash says that the Sukkot are taken by some (the Sadducees and Karaites) quite literally as the tents that sheltered Israel for forty years [vii]. Others say they figuratively refer to the Clouds of Glory that protected Israel then (see Numbers 10:34). The festival is a time of joy because it celebrates the Summer harvest and it is the culmination of a spiritual process; which begins with redemption (Pesach), followed by the purpose of the redemption (receiving the Torah on Shavuot) and finally these lessons are brought into everyday life when worshippers find their joy in observing the commandments (Sukkot).
The citron resembles the heart; the lulav (palm branch), the spine; the hasidim (myrtle leaves), the eyes; and the anabas, (willow branches), the lips. By holding all four together, they symbolise the need for a person to use all one's faculties in the service of God. A lulav has a pleasant taste, but no aroma. It symbolises a scholar deficient in good deeds. The myrtle has no taste but has a pleasant aroma and symbolises who is deficientin Torah but possesses good deeds. The willow lacks both and symbolists a person with neither. The four Species are held together because all sorts of people must be united in the community of Israel. [viii]
The festival is prophetically connected with the fate of all Gentiles, for Zechariah writes:
“It shall come about that everyone left of all the nations who came against Yerushalayim shall go up from year to year to worship the King, Adonai of Heaven’s Armies, and to keep the festival of Sukkot. For whoever does not come up from all the families of the earth to worship the King, Adonai of Heaven’s Armies, there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt does not go up, if it does not come, then they will have no overflow [from the Nile River]. This will be the plague with which Adonai will smite the nations that do not come up to keep the festival of Sukkot. This will be the punishment of Egypt and of all nations that do not come up to keep the festival of Sukkot.” (Zechariah 14:16-19)
This refers to the Messianic Age, after the whole world has come against Jerusalem and been defeated; in the light of the New Testament it should be understood as taking place after the second coming of Jesus the Messiah. The rabbis of the Talmud recognized the connection of this festival with the Gentiles: speaking of the seventy bulls required by Numbers 29:12-34 to be sacrificed during the seven days of the festival, “Rabbi El‛azar said, ‘To what do these seventy bulls correspond? To the seventy nations’ ” (Sukkah 55b). In rabbinic tradition, the traditional number of Gentile nations is seventy; the seventy bulls are to make atonement for them. [ix] This is based on the seventy grandsons of Noah.
The seventh, last day of Sukkot was its climax. Throughout the seven days of the festival a special priest had carried water in a gold pitcher from the Pool of Shiloach (Siloam) to be poured into a basin at the foot of the altar by the High Priest. It symbolized prayer for rain, which begins the next day, on Sh’mini Atzeret; and it also pointed toward the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the people of Israel. The rabbis associated the custom with Isaiah 12:3, “With joy shall you draw water from the wells of salvation.” (In a suggestive reflection of how the holiday used to be celebrated, today’s Moroccan Jews pour water on each other at Sukkot.) On the seventh day the water pouring was accompanied by Priests blowing gold trumpets, the Levites singing sacred songs, and ordinary people waving their lulavs and chanting the Hallel (Psalms 113–118), which includes in its closing verses:
“Adonai, please save us! [Hebrew Hoshia’na or Hoshana]
Adonai, please prosper us!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of Adonai!
We have blessed you out of the house of Adonai.
God is Adonai, and he has given us light.”
(Psalm 118:25-27)
The words, “Please save us!” led to the day’s being called Hoshana Rabbah, the Great Hosanna. This prayer had Messianic overtones, as is seen from its use when Jesus made his triumphal entry into Yerushalayim a few days before his execution (Matthew 21:9, Mark 11:9–10). It was also a prayer for salvation from sin, for Hoshana Rabbah was understood to be the absolutely final chance to have one’s sins for the year forgiven. On Rosh-Hashanah one asks to “be inscribed in the Book of Life”, and on Yom-Kippur one hopes to have that inscription “sealed”; yet in Jewish tradition there remained opportunity for forgiveness up to Hoshana Rabbah.
In addition, “A connection between the possession of the Holy Spirit and ecstasy, or religious joy, is found in the ceremony of water drawing, Simchat Beit-HaShoevah [“feast of water-drawing”], on the festival of Sukkot. The Mishnah said that he who had never seen this ceremony, which was accompanied by dancing, singing and music (Sukkot 5:4), had never seen true joy (Sukkot 5:1). Yet this was also considered a ceremony in which the participants, as it were, drew inspiration from the Holy Spirit itself, which can only be possessed by those whose hearts are full of religious joy (Jerusalem Talmud, Sukkot 5:1, 55a).” (Encyclopedia Judaica 14:365)
From this passage we also learn that Jesus and his disciples, like other Jews, observed at least portions of the Oral Torah and did not utterly reject it as “traditions of men”—since the water-drawing ceremony is specified not in the Tanakh but in the Mishna.
It was in the midst of this water pouring, trumpet blasting, palm waving, psalm chanting and ecstatic joy on the part of people seeking forgiveness—and in the presence of all 24 divisions of the priesthood—that Jesus cried out in the Temple courts, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and drinking! Whoever trusts in me, as the Tanakh says, rivers of living water will flow from his inmost being!” Compare Isaiah 44:3, 55:1, 58:11; also the woman at the well, above, 4:6–15; and the ultimate fulfillment at Revelation 22:17. In effect Jesus was declaring, “I am the answer to your prayers.” His dramatic cry, supported by the full panoply of Temple ritual, was not misunderstood, as vv. 40–43 make abundantly clear. His subsequent proclamation, “I am the light of the world,” also based on the passage of Psalm 118 quoted above, provoked an even more agitated reaction. [x]
In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world: whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light which gives life.” It brings to mind a passage from Isaiah 9:1 “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” from Malachi 4:2, “But to you who fear my name the sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings”; both are alluded to at Luke 1: 78-79. There are many texts that refer metaphorically to light and Christian’s have understood them as referring to Jesus as the light or in connection with light.
His remark was specifically suited to the feast of Sukkot; for, according to the Mishna, at the Temple
“there were four golden menorahs with four golden bowls at the top of each, and four ladders each leading to a bowl. Four strong young cohanim would climb up with pitchers each holding 9 liters of oil which they would pour into the bowls. From the worn-out drawers and girdles of the cohanim they made wicks, and with them they lit the menorahs; and there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that was not lit up by the light of the Beit-HaSho’evah [festivities]. Pious men and men of good deeds would dance around [the menorahs] with lit torches in their hands, singing songs and praises, while the Levites played harps, lyres, cymbals, trumpets and innumerable other musical instruments ….” (Sukkah 5:2–4)
Stern says the Gemara on this passage says the menorahs were 75 feet high (Sukkah 52b). Thus, the water-drawing festival was accompanied by bright lights and dancing—for Sukkot is specifically a festival of rejoicing. As before, when the water from Shiloach was being poured and Jesus used the occasion to invite people to come to him and drink, now he uses the fact that the feast is accompanied by a blaze of light to announce, “I am the light of the world,” adding a promise with implications for both this life and eternity. [xi]
Neusner places Sukkot into context: Passover places Israel’s freedom into the context of the affirmation of life beyond sin while Sukkot returns Israel to the fragility of abiding in the wilderness. Sukkot, as sages portray the Festival, is to be seen only in the context of the penitential season that begins with the month of Elul, reaches its climactic moment with the judgment of the New Year and atonement of the Day of Atonement, and then works its way to an elegant conclusion in Sukkot. In the rhythm of the Torah’s time, Sukkot forms a meditation, performed by deeds, upon the uncertain life that is still open to judgment even beyond the penitential season. Israel recapitulates the life of the wilderness wanderings, beyond death yet before eternal life, by taking up residence in the fragile present and not yet in the perfected life that will take place in the Land when Israel regains Eden.[xii]
[i] Leviticus 23:34; Deuteronomy 16:13, 16:16; 31:10; Zechariah 14:16; 14:18;
[ii] Exodus 23:16; 34:22;
[iii] 1 Kings 8:2; Ezekiel 45:23; 2 Chronicles 7:8
[iv] Leviticus 23:39; Judges 21:19.
[v] Neusner, J. (2008). The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers.
[vi] Sherman, R. N. (1998). The Chumash, Stone Edition'. New York: Mesorah Publications Ltd. Page 895.
[vii] The Feast of Sukkot. The Jewish Encyclopedia. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14103-sukkot-feast-of. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
[viii]Sherman, R. N. (1998). The Chumash, Stone Edition'. New York: Mesorah Publications Ltd. Page 688-689.
[ix] Stern, D. H. (1996). Jewish New Testament Commentary : A companion volume to the Jewish New Testament (electronic ed.) (Jn 7:2). Clarksville: Jewish New Testament Publications.
[x] Stern, D. H. (1996). Jewish New Testament Commentary : A companion volume to the Jewish New Testament (electronic ed.) (Jn 7:37). Clarksville: Jewish New Testament Publications.
[xi] Stern, D. H. (1996). Jewish New Testament Commentary : A companion volume to the Jewish New Testament (electronic ed.) (Jn 8:12). Clarksville: Jewish New Testament Publications.
[xii] Neusner, J. (2008). The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers.
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