The Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot)

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. Last and happiest festival of the year. The water-pouring ceremony is post-biblical but essential background for John 7 - on the last day of that feast, in the middle of that ceremony, Jesus stood up in the temple and shouted that anyone thirsty should come to Him.

Requirements

• Seven days from Tishri 15, plus a closing assembly on the eighth (23:34-36).
• Living in booths (sukkôt), shelters built from branches.
  • Sklar defines the term as structures built for protection from the elements (Isa 4:6; Jon 4:5), and notes v. 43 explains why… at least some Israelites lived in such structures at the exodus, since not everyone had tents - perhaps because many in Egypt had been living in houses (Exod 3:22).
• Branches gathered on day 1. Palm branches for the shelters.
• Largest sacrificial requirement of the year (Num 29:12-38). Descending bulls: 13 on day 1, 12 on day 2, down to 7 on day 7. Plus 2 rams and 14 lambs daily, plus a male goat as purification offering.
  • Ashley's totals: 70 bulls over the week (7×10), 14 rams, 98 lambs (14×7), plus 7 goats. Arithmetic is deliberate.
  • Eighth day drops to a single bull, one ram, seven lambs.
• Pilgrimage feast (Deut 16:16), partial work prohibition on days 1 and 8.
• Torah reading every seventh year (Deut 31:9-13). Block notes Moses supplements the sacrificial rituals with a public reading of the entire law in the sabbatical year.

The Happiest Week of the Year

• Block: "Linked to processing and storage of the foodstuffs, Booths was the happiest of all the festivals (Deut. 16:13-15)."
• Storms: "Unlike the somber and serious mood of Passover, Tabernacles was a time of great festivity and rejoicing. For seven days in Jerusalem the people lived in booths or tabernacles made of leaves and branches. It was truly a time of joy, dancing, singing, and shouting."
• Köstenberger: simply called "the Feast" by the Jews (1 Kgs 8:2, 65; Neh 8:14; Ezek 45:25). Josephus calls it the holiest and greatest of the Jewish feasts (Antiquities 8.100).
• Block's technical clarification: although Exod 23:16 times it at the end of the agricultural cycle, "technically it was not a harvest festival." So, the harvest was already in and this is the celebration after the work.

Remembering Homelessness in the Middle of Prosperity

• At the moment of maximum agricultural security - barns full, year's labour complete - God commands the entire nation to move out of its houses and sleep in shelters made of sticks for a week.

By living in these structures as they feasted on the harvest, the Israelites were to teach their descendants, and to remind themselves, that the blessings of redemption and bountiful provision they enjoyed were gracious gifts from their loving King, gifts that called for an appropriate response of wholehearted dependence, obedience and worship.

• Jay Sklar, Leviticus (TOTC)

• House: having received forgiveness on the Day of Atonement, "the people commemorate and reenact the exodus by observing the Feast of Tabernacles. Again Israel is reminded that God is present among them now as much as in the exodus."
• Block's summary of what Israel's festivals accomplished applies here really well:
  • theological - instilling a high view of God
  • didactic - instructing children and newcomers
  • communal - forming corporate identity as a redeemed people
  • social and ethical - "providing opportunities to involve the marginalized in the mainstream of Israelite faith and life"

The Water-Pouring Ceremony - Later Development, Essential for John 7

Not in the Torah. Morales gives the fullest description:

the high priest would take a golden pitcher and draw water from the pool of Siloam; then, followed by a procession of priests, musicians and pilgrims, he would enter the temple through the Water Gate and approach the altar. He, along with the priestly host, would circle around the altar once each of the first six days of the feast and seven times on the last and seventh day, accompanied by the singing of the Hallel (Pss 113-118). After three blasts from the shofar, he would ascend the steps of the altar and pour out the water as a libation into a silver basin while another priest poured out wine simultaneously into another, both basins having snouts so that the water and wine flowed down the altar.

• L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?

• Storms adds the lulav and ethrog carried in each hand, and the antiphonal chanting of Pss 113-118 climaxing in Ps 118:24-29.
• Two meanings: 1) Seasonally a prayer for a fertile rainy season. 2) Spiritually linked early to Isa 12:3 - "with joy you will draw water out of the wells of salvation."
• Within the prophetic corpus, Tabernacles is tied to the ingathering of the Gentiles. Zech 14 depicts the nations ascending to Jerusalem to keep this feast (14:16-21), in connection with the Spirit's work: "In that day it shall be that living waters will flow from Jerusalem" (14:8).
  • Given the prophetic association of water with the Spirit, "the water-pouring at Tabernacles was interpreted eschatologically as the symbol of the outpouring of the Spirit of God in the messianic time," understood as a prophetic act - "a pleading not merely for rain from heaven, but for the promised gift of the Spirit."
• Keener adds the lectionary detail: early Jewish tradition suggests the readings on the last day included Zech 14, interpreted alongside Ezek 47 - both teaching that rivers of living water would flow from Jerusalem bringing life to all the earth.

New Testament Fulfilment - John 7:37-39

It was then, with the ritual of water still fresh in the minds of the people, that a man from Nazareth stood up from a visible and prominent place and cried aloud… Simply, yet profoundly, put, Jesus was saying: 'This feast is all about me! The water that flowed from the rock in the wilderness symbolized me! The sacrifice on the altar is about me! The water in the golden pitcher points to me!… No longer do you need to celebrate the feast. Celebrate me!'

• Sam Storms, Kingdom Come

• Köstenberger's view: "Jesus fulfills the symbolism of the Feast of Tabernacles, conveyed by the water-pouring ceremonies that celebrated the abundance of God's blessings at harvest time in reminiscence of God's provision for his people in the wilderness."

A Punctuation Problem

Genuine exegetical dispute. Greek is unpunctuated so two readings possible.

• Eastern view (Origen, Greek fathers, NIV text): rivers flow from within the believer.
• Western view (Latin fathers): from within Christ.
• Ferguson's judgement: "the more theologically satisfying view is that Jesus himself is the source of living water, the fulfilment of the wilderness rock smitten by Moses (Ex. 17:5-6) from whom living water flows (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4), and/or the new temple of God envisaged in Ezekiel 47."
• Keener notes the same, adding that v. 39 has the water flowing to the believer, which supports the Christ-as-source reading, and that Jesus may be presented as "the foundation stone of a new temple, the source of the water of life" (John 19:34; Rev 22:1).
• Morales concurs and offers a translation: "out of his [the Messiah's] heart will flow rivers of living water."
• The Christ-as-source reading has the better of it. But the two aren't fully in competition because if the Spirit flows from Christ to the believer, the believer becomes a channel, which is Isa 58:11 and what Köstenberger takes to be the point: "he is the dispenser of the Holy Spirit, through whom those who come to him for salvation will be abundant blessings to others."

The Cross as the Source

• Ferguson traces the theme to the crucifixion. Jesus, who cried out at Tabernacles that the thirsty should come to Him, says on the cross "I thirst" (19:28).

In John's record, Jesus the Messiah becomes the thirsty one under God's covenant curse, so that to those who are thirsty he may hand over his thirst-quenching Spirit (Jn. 19:30). Again, John alone notes that when one of the soldiers pierced Christ's side both blood and water flowed from it (Jn. 19:34; cf. 1 Jn. 5:6-8). Christ's death is to be seen both as a sacrifice for sins and as the means by which the water of new life in the Spirit flows to us.

• Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit

• Morales takes the wording of 19:30 further. This is not certain so hold it loosely.
  • Greek paredōken to pneuma is usually rendered "he gave up his spirit" as a euphemism for death.
  • Morales objects: would be an isolated instance of such a phrase; paradidōmi means to hand over or deliver rather than to lose; to pneuma is "the spirit" rather than "his spirit."
  • Given that in John the cross is the first step of exaltation and exaltation exists for the pouring out of the Spirit, "John cannot help but offer a foreshadowing of the inevitable result of his sacrifice."
  • May be over-reading a euphemism. Either way the Tabernacles theme completes at the cross: the water is poured out.

And the Feast That Hasn't Stopped

• Zech 14:16-19 places the nations keeping Tabernacles in the age to come.
• Rev 7:9 shows a great multitude from every nation before the throne with palm branches in their hands.
• The last feast of Israel's year points at the last scene of the story.

Should Christians Keep It Then?

• Block's caution: Paul is "indifferent to whether people observe these customs" (Rom 14:5-6; Col 2:16). Observance isn't commanded.
• But the substance isn't indifferent. The ingathering is finished, the Spirit has been poured out, and God has moved into a tent among His people permanently.
• John 1:14 - "The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us."