The Feasts of God: The Feast of Booths

After the feasts connected with the harvest comes the last feast, the Feast of Booths. The people build booths to remember the grace that kept their clothes and sandals from wearing out through forty years in the wilderness. With the joy of a finished year of farming, they store away their grain and fruit and eat and rejoice for seven days.

Every part of sowing and reaping happens not through human effort but only as God rules over the weather. The seventy bulls offered at the Feast of Booths carry the heart of God, who embraces even the Gentile nations as people he will save. The Pharisees tried to seize Jesus after this feast had fully ended, but before that, Jesus had already spoken of himself as the light of the world.

Bound by forms, people held on only to the picture of the Messiah they already knew and failed to recognize Jesus standing right in front of them. The hope this feast points to is that even if the tent of the body falls, there is an eternal house that God has built. Therefore the message ends with lifting up hands to bless Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.