(Lev. 23:33-44; Num. 29:12-40; Deut. 16:13-15)
History:
Beginning on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and continuing for eight days to the twenty-second of the month was the Feast of Tabernacles. All Israelite men were again required to attend. Both the first and the eighth days were celebrated as Sabbaths, with the eighth day being the especially “great day of the feast.” (John 7:37) There were special ceremonies and sacrifices each of the eight days, and the whole nation spent the week “camped out” in small, temporary shelters, sukkah, made from the branches of certain of the local trees. They had finished all their harvesting by this time (grain in the spring, fruit during the summer and fall) and, with the completion of the Day of Atonement, they were renewed in God’s special favor for another year.
Significance to the Jews:
This was the Jews’ favorite Festival, truly a celebration, a time of thanksgiving. It was a reminder of the past when they had wandered in the wilderness, living in sukkah (tents), continually moving from one place to another. God had been leading them, they were His people during the whole time, but they didn’t have a place to really call home until they arrived in the Promised Land. It was a celebration of the present blessings of God as it came at the end of their agricultural year, when all their harvesting was completed. He specifically reminded them to include the less fortunate as they celebrated with their abundance: the foreigners, orphans, and widows, along with the Levites who didn’t own any land and depended on the rest of the nation for their support. This Festival also pointed forward to the time when all the great promises of God would be fulfilled in the future Kingdom of Glory.
There are various events in the history of the Jews that happened in the seventh month during the Feast of Tabernacles. One of the more significant ones is the dedication of Solomon’s Temple. (2 Chronicles 5-7) A time of great revival and celebration occurred during the time Nehemiah and Ezra were leading out in the rebuilding of Jerusalem. In the seventh month, the people requested that the Law should be read and explained to them. When they realized that God wanted them to keep the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles), they gladly entered into the festive spirit of the occasion. (Nehemiah 8)
Another situation that involved this Festival but is a very dark blot on the history of Israel occurred when Jeroboam was rising to power immediately after the rebellion of the ten tribes. He realized that when the time of the great Feast of Tabernacles arrived, his people might return to Jerusalem to participate with Judah in the celebration and be drawn back to allegiance to Rehoboam. To prevent this, he set up two idols and established a substitute Feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month so his people would stay at home. God was very displeased and sent a prophet to rebuke him for creating a substitute “which he had devised of his own heart.” (1 Kings 12:25 – 13:6)
The number seven is often used in the Bible as a symbol of completeness and perfection; eight seems to be a symbol of new beginnings. The Priests were consecrated for seven days and on the eighth day began their ministry. (Leviticus 8, 9) A recovered leper was in a cleansing period, kept out of his home, for seven days; then with the final cleansing on the eighth day, he could return to his former home. (Leviticus 14) For other types of uncleanness, there was a similar protocol. (Leviticus 15) A baby boy was circumcised on the eighth day. (Leviticus 12:2, 3) A new-born animal was acceptable as a sacrifice when it was eight days old. (Leviticus 22:27) We will be in this world for six thousand years, the seventh we will spend in heaven, the eighth millenium we will begin living in God’s new creation. (Revelation 21)
Significance to us:
The Festival of Tabernacles is a symbol of a temporary life in this world: this world is not our permanent home (John 15:19; 17:14-16; 2 Corinthians 4:18; Hebrews 11:9, 10, 13-16); what we anticipate in the future is infinitely better than what we have now (1 Corinthians 2:9; 15:51-54; 2 Corinthians 5:1-4); someday we will live with God in His Glorious Eternal Kingdom (John 14:1-3; Revelation 21:1-4).
We need to be reminded (especially in America) that, even though we are relatively comfortable here in this world, we are only here for a little while. Regardless of what we have now, regardless of what happens to us now, it is pretty insignificant in comparison to what God has in the future for us (Matthew 6:19-21; Romans 8:16-18, 21).
The Festival of Tabernacles remains as a type and symbol of Jesus’ Second Coming and the Celebration when everything is completed. After the warnings of the Trumpets and the final judgment and cleansing of the Atonement, when earth’s harvest is done, God’s people will settle down to live with Him forever and truly celebrate His goodness (Matthew 13:24-30; 37-43 (especially verse 43); Revelation 14:15-20; 21:3).
The Feast of Tabernacles was not only commemorative but typical. It not only pointed back to the wilderness sojourn, but, as the feast of harvest, it celebrated the ingathering of the fruits of the earth, and pointed forward to the great day of final ingathering, when the Lord of the harvest shall send forth His reapers to gather the tares together in bundles for the fire, and to gather the wheat into His garner. . . . And every voice in the whole universe will unite in joyful praise to God. Says the revelator, “Every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” Revelation 5:13. Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 541
The slaying of the Passover lamb was a shadow of the death of Christ. . . . Like the wave sheaf, which was the first ripe grain gathered before the harvest, Christ is the first fruits of that immortal harvest of redeemed ones that at the future resurrection shall be gathered into the garner of God.
These types were fulfilled, not only as to the event, but as to the time. On the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month, the very day and month on which for fifteen long centuries the Passover lamb had been slain, Christ, having eaten the Passover with His disciples, instituted that feast which was to commemorate His own death as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” That same night He was taken by wicked hands to be crucified and slain. And as the antitype of the wave sheaf our Lord was raised from the dead on the third day, “the first fruits of them that slept,” a sample of all the resurrected just, whose “vile body” shall be changed, and “fashioned like unto His glorious body.” Verse 20; Philippians 3:21.
In like manner the types which relate to the second advent (the fall Feasts) must be fulfilled at the time pointed out in the symbolic service. The Great Controversy, p. 399
With those who lived at a distance from the tabernacle, more than a month of every year must have been occupied in attendance upon these holy convocations. The Lord saw that these gatherings were necessary for the spiritual life of His people. They needed to turn away from their worldly cares, to commune with God, and to contemplate unseen realities.
If the children of Israel needed the benefit of these holy convocations in their time, how much more do we need them in these last days of peril and conflict! And if the people of the world then needed the light which God had committed to His church, how much more do they need it now! Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, p. 40
At these yearly assemblies the hearts of old and young would be encouraged in the service of God, while the association of the people from the different quarters of the land would strengthen the ties that bound them to God and to one another. Well would it be for the people of God at the present time to have a Feast of Tabernacles – a joyous commemoration of the blessings of God to them. As the children of Israel celebrated the deliverance that God had wrought for their fathers, and His miraculous preservation of them during their journeyings from Egypt, so should we gratefully call to mind the various ways He has devised for bringing us out from the world, and from the darkness of error, into the precious light of His grace and truth. Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 540