Sukkot (Booths or Tabernacles)
Sukkot is the most celebrative of all the Biblical feasts and the last of the fall festivals. Between the hard work of harvest and that of the coming winter, it brings a time of remembrance of their days in the wilderness. The booths, built out of brush and decorated with fruit, become the family’s abode for the week. It has a great teaching for children: “God took care of us when we walked with him. Walk with God and he will take care of you.”
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Secularization through the centuries has come to emphasize Sukkot as merely a harvest festival, which it is. That’s very secondary, however. It celebrates that time in Jewish history when God was with them in the wilderness. There, he spoke to Moses, “face to face.” Thus, Israel experienced Yahweh as Immanuel, meaning God with us.
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God would come again, even more personally, when he set aside his glory and took human form. It was no coincidence, when God told Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14.) As Israel tabernacled with God’s presence on their journey, God came and tabernacled with us in ours.
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