Oneg (Meal) in Gymnasium following the Service

Sukkot is Hebrew for Tabernacles. The last festival of the Biblical calendar, the Feast of Tabernacles also closes the holy season. And what a joyous Festival it is. For eight days the Jewish people celebrate the final harvest and God’s provision for them in the wilderness. Around the world, many Jewish families build a temporary hut called a sukkah and spend eight days eating and fellowshipping with family and friends as a reminder of their forty years in the wilderness until they reached the Promise Land–Israel. Families, or a family member, had to come to Jerusalem to celebrate, and the first and last days were sacred assemblies. Interestingly, this is the only festival God commands all of the nations to celebrate (Zechariah 14:16-19) in Jerusalem.

Zechariah 14:16-19 says, “Then all who survive from all the nations that came to attack Jerusalem will go up annually to worship the King, the Lord who rules over all, and to observe the Feast of Tabernacles. But if any of the nations anywhere on earth refuse to go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord who rules over all, they will get no rain. If the Egyptians will not do so, they will get no rain – instead there will be the kind of plague which the Lord inflicts on any nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. This will be the punishment of Egypt and of all nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.”

It would take volumes to delve into the wonderful symbolisms of Sukkot: the exquisiteness of these last three Festivals being the Call, the Atonement and the Final Harvest; that our bodies are only temporary dwellings until we reach our “Promised Land” and find our eternal home (2 Corinthians 5); that Yeshua/Jesus “tabernacled” among us (John 1:14); when Yeshua/Jesus celebrated Sukkot in the Temple, He announced He was the Living Waters in fulfillment of Isaiah 12:3 (John 7:37-39) and so much more.