Festival of Tabernacles

The “Festival of Tabernacles” (John 7:2), also called Sukkoth or the Feast of Ingathering/Feast of Booths, is one of Israel’s fall feasts. Its purpose was to remind the Israelites of the time their ancestors had spent in “booths” (tents or shelters) during the forty years of wilderness wanderings that followed the exodus from Egypt. Sukkoth was one of the three feasts (along with Passover and Firstfruits) prescribed as “pilgrimage feasts”—when observing Jews traveled to a communal celebration as a nation. In Exodus 23:14–17, God listed these three feasts as the times that the people of Israel were to come and stand before Him, which meant a journey to the temple in Jerusalem once it had been built. Israel celebrated a total of seven annual feasts—four in the spring and three in the fall—but only the three feasts listed in Exodus 23 carried the expectation of pilgrimage (see Deuteronomy 16:16; 2 Chronicles 8:13).

Bill Crowder