The Feast of
Tabernacles:
What Are Tabernacles?
Before reading the Old Testament of
the Bible, the only time many people have heard the term
tabernacle used is in reference to the "Mormon Tabernacle
Choir," a musical group which has been nationally famous for
over 100 years.
The choir gets its
name from the
building where it is headquartered, the Mormon Tabernacle in
Salt Lake City, Utah. This "tabernacle" is a huge
permanent building with seating originally for 8000 people,
built in the 1860s. It has been the location of major meetings
of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (commonly referred to as
Mormons) throughout its history. It isn't quite clear how the building found itself
dubbed a tabernacle, as its qualities are about as far from
those of a biblical tabernacle as it is possible to get.
But then again, there are now many
church buildings across the land that their owners have also
decided to call a "tabernacle." Typical names for such groups
and their buildings are "Revival Tabernacle" and "Full Gospel
Tabernacle." And most of these buildings are also very
unlike the original biblical meaning of the term.
For both the Mormon Tabernacle, and
the other church buildings which are called tabernacles by their
owners, are solid, permanent, and sometimes even massive and
ornate places of worship. The Mormon Tabernacle, for instance,
has one of the largest pipe organs in the country, seen in the
picture of the choir above, having over 11,000 pipes. Perhaps the founders saw the word
tabernacle in the Bible used in the description of the
Israelites in the wilderness after they left Egypt, didn't know
much about the Hebrew word translated that way, or even know
what the English word tabernacle meant, and decided that
tabernacle must be just a general word for a "special building
where people go to worship"--like the buildings most people now
call "churches."
The Hebrew word heykal,
meaning "a large, permanent public building such as palaces and
temples," is used in the Old Testament to describe both the
Temple in Jerusalem and pagan temples.
Ezra 3:10
When the builders laid the foundation of the temple [Hebrew:
heykal] of the LORD, the priests in their vestments
and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with
cymbals, took their places to praise the LORD, as prescribed
by David king of Israel.
This would have been the word
that would have been applicable to a structure comparable to a
cathedral or "mega-church" of today. But the Hebrew words
translated as tabernacle in the Bible do not imply a big
building full of worshippers at all.
The first time the word is used in
the English King James Version of the Bible, it refers to a single special tent-like structure that
Moses was to oversee being built in the wilderness after the
Israelites left Egypt. God said:
Exodus 25:9
Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the
pattern I will show you.
Tabernacle replica, in the Judean Desert in Israel
This structure was
not a place that was designed to hold groups of people during a worship
gathering. It was a place to house a collection of special
religious objects that were to be used in rituals performed by a
small number of priests. The main part of the Tabernacle could
only be entered by such priests, for very narrowly-prescribed
activities. And the innermost compartment of the Tabernacle,
called the "Holy of Holies," was to be entered only once a year,
and then only by the one individual designated at the time as
the High Priest.
The Hebrew word for this structure
was mishkan:
mishkan
a residence
(including a shepherd’s hut, the lair of animals,
figuratively the grave; also the Temple); specifically the
Tabernacle (properly its wooden walls)
The Tabernacle wasn't designed as
a residence for people--it was to be a "dwelling place" for the
presence of God on Earth. When God met with Moses on Mt. Sinai
to give him the Ten Commandment stones, the more detailed laws
for Israel, and the design of the Tabernacle, He described what
Moses was to do with those two stones. He was to have a chest
(called an "ark") made, covered with gold, and topped with a
golden lid and with figures of two supernatural beings called
cherubim. (For more about cherubim, see the
Biblical Angelology article on the
Answers About
Angels website by the same author as these Times of
Refreshing articles.) And this ark
was to be put into that Holy of Holies compartment:
Exodus 25:21-22
Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the
Testimony [the two stones with the Ten Commandments on
them], which I will give you. There, above the cover between
the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I
will meet with you and give you all my commands for the
Israelites.
Moses was allowed regularly into
the immediate presence of God, but access to the Holy of Holies
was limited otherwise from then on to the High Priest.
Leviticus 16:2
The LORD said to Moses: "Tell your brother Aaron [the first
High Priest] not to come whenever he chooses into the Most
Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement
cover on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in
the cloud over the atonement cover.
So it is clear from these details
that the Tabernacle was not at all like modern church buildings.
Even the later Temple itself in Jerusalem (which was referred to
at times as a mishkan also), although a large permanent
building, was not intended to hold worshippers. It was just a
more elegant "residence" for God's presence, and a site for
those same priestly rituals. The courtyards around that Temple
would hold many people at the times of worship, but those people
did not enter into the Temple itself. That was still reserved
just for the priests, and the innermost room, the Holy of
Holies, was still only occupied by the High Priest once a year.
But what does this have to do
with the "Feast of Tabernacles"?
It is not uncommon for people who
have never read about the Feast of Tabernacles in the Bible to
confuse the Exodus Tabernacle with the kind of tabernacle
related to the Feast of Tabernacles, and thus mistakenly refer
to the celebration as the "Feast of the Tabernacle." But
the unique Tabernacle in the wilderness that held the Ark of the
Covenant is not the kind of tabernacle referred to in the annual
Feast of Tabernacles. Notice that this word is plural.
Leviticus 23:34
Say to the Israelites: 'On the fifteenth day of the seventh
month the LORD's Feast of Tabernacles begins, and it
lasts for seven days.
In English, tabernacle implies
not a permanent residence, but a relatively unsubstantial,
temporary structure made out of inexpensive or foraged
materials:
Etymology: Middle
English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin tabernaculum,
from Latin, tent, from taberna hut
The Hebrew word in Leviticus 23
that is translated as tabernacle is a totally different word
from the word mishkan which was used for the Exodus
Tabernacle. The word here is sukkah.
And, just like the English word
tabernacle, it implies not a regular residence, but a "hut,"
which in English refers to a "small and temporary dwelling of
simple construction." The KJV translators sometimes translated
the word also as "booth," another word which in English can
imply a temporary, hastily-made shelter.
The word sukkah first
appears in Genesis, in the story of Jacob's reuniting with his
brother Esau:
Genesis 33:16-17
So that day Esau started on his way back to Seir. Jacob,
however, went to Succoth, where he built a place for himself
and made shelters [from Hebrew sukkah; KJV:
booths] for his livestock. That is why the place is
called Succoth [Hebrew plural of sukkah].
Many cultures still erect these
kinds of "huts" for livestock, shepherds, or agricultural
workers. Here is a modern shepherd's hut from Cyprus.
In the first century, the
Greek term that was used to describe the Feast of Tabernacles
comes from the Greek word skenos, which also means "a
hut or temporary residence."
The specific name of the Feast in
the New Testament was the "heorte skenopegia": the
"feast of setting up tents" or booths, from skenos
(tent) and pegnumi--to "pitch" or "fix in place with
pegs."
John 7:2
But when the Jewish Feast of
Tabernacles [feast of setting up booths] was near,
We are still used to
seeing "booths" in America in modern times, but not as huts for
shepherds. Now the term is often used for temporary "stalls" or
"stands" at fairs, used to display and sell goods, and for
Midway games.
In the 19th century, one could
find worship gatherings, especially "evangelistic meetings,"
held in hastily-constructed shelters called "brush arbors," that
are related in one way to the idea of the booths for the Feast
of Tabernacles.
And in later years, the term
tabernacle was often used to describe more substantial but still
temporary tents used for similar activities. Here is the huge
tent used by evangelist A.A. Allen in the 1950s.
It is this notion of a "temporary
dwelling" that is the focus of the Feast of Tabernacles, called
by Jews in Hebrew Sukkot--the Feast of Booths.
Leviticus 23:33-43
The LORD
said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites: 'On the fifteenth day of
the seventh month the LORD's Feast of Tabernacles begins, and it
lasts for seven days. The first day is a sacred assembly; do no
regular work. For seven days present offerings made to the LORD
by fire, and on the eighth day hold a sacred assembly and
present an offering made to the LORD by fire. It is the closing
assembly; do no regular work. So beginning with the fifteenth
day of the seventh month, after you have gathered the crops of
the land, celebrate the festival to the LORD for seven days; the
first day is a day of rest, and the eighth day also is a day of
rest.
On the
first day you are to take choice fruit from the trees, and palm
fronds, leafy branches and poplars, and rejoice before the LORD
your God for seven days. Celebrate this as a festival to the
LORD for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance
for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month.
Live in booths for seven days: All native-born Israelites
are to live in booths so your descendants will know that I had
the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt.
I am the LORD your God.' "
Many centuries later, the
biblical record seems to indicate that the Israelites had lost
much of the understanding of what God had told Moses, and they
had ceased to keep this Feast. The nation had fallen into
corruption and false worship, and God allowed their Temple to be
destroyed, and for them to be taken into captivity by the
kingdom of Babylon. They obtained their freedom many years
later, and some chose to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the
Temple and their nation. At that point, their leaders
rediscovered the command to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and
the book of Nehemiah describes for the reader how they did the
observance.
Nehemiah 8:13-18
On the second day of the month,
the heads of all the families, along with the priests and
the Levites, gathered around Ezra the scribe to give
attention to the words of the Law. They found written in the
Law, which the LORD had commanded through Moses, that the
Israelites were to live in booths during the feast of the
seventh month and that they should proclaim this word and
spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem: "Go out
into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and
wild olive trees, and from myrtles, palms and shade trees,
to make booths"--as it is written.
So the people went out and
brought back branches and built themselves booths on their
own roofs, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house
of God and in the square by the Water Gate and the one by
the Gate of Ephraim. The whole company that had returned
from exile built booths and lived in them. From the days of
Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not
celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great.
Day after day, from the
first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the
Law of God. They celebrated the feast for seven days,
and on the eighth day, in accordance with the
regulation, there was an assembly.
To this day, Jews around the world
celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles by building similar
structures, still called sukkah (singular) or sukkot
(plural), either connected to their houses or on their
property. Usually it is a three-sided hut, using the house as
the fourth wall. The walls may be of branches or lumber,
sometimes fully-enclosed.
Sukkot in Jerusalem.
But it is a tradition to make the
roofing out of "leafy branches," making sure that the
construction is loose enough that the sky can be seen through
the cracks.
Sukkah in a park in New York city.
The sukkah is typically
decorated inside with more leafy greens, as well as a variety of fruits hung from the ceiling, and other festive touches.
Most
families at least eat their meals and study the scriptures in
this sukkah daily during the seven days of the Feast of
Tabernacles. If it is large enough, and the weather permits,
they may even sleep in it. At the end of the seventh day, the
sukkah is taken down, and on the eighth day there is a
special worship service at the local synagogue.
It is also common for Jewish
congregations to build a "symbolic" sukkah inside their
synagogues as part of the celebration of this Feast.
See the article Jewish Feast and Holy Day Customs:
Sukkot for more information on how modern Jews observe the Feast of
Tabernacles.
Jesus: The Reason for
These Seasons
Many people who
accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, whether they refer to
themselves as "Christian" or "Messianic," observe the Feast of
Tabernacles as a time of worship, fellowship, and celebration.
They believe that this Feast, along with the other Feasts
and Holy Days described in Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16, are shadows
pointing to the reality of Jesus. And they believe that there
are valuable spiritual lessons to be learned year by year
through actually physically setting aside these Times of
Refreshing as
"appointments with God."
For more about the
biblical Feasts in general, see the article
Theme Times elsewhere on this Times of Refreshing
website.
For an explanation
of the Christian observance of the Feast of Tabernacles, see
The 3 Rs: Feast of Tabernacles elsewhere on this Times of Refreshing website.
For an
explanation of the Christian observance of each of the Feasts as
they come in their seasons, explore the links on the navigation
bar above.
For sources of the
Hebrew, Greek, and English definitions in this and other
articles on this website, see the Information
page.
For sources
of the Biblical quotations in this and other articles on this
website, see the Information page.
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