TENT

The feast of tabernacles is one of those feasts that leave me wondering which really is my best feast. Truly, Jewish feasts aren’t meant in any way to be loved one over another, but each time I glean into the significance of this feast I cannot but help thinking it the best. Well, until passover comes on and the whole process starts in my head again. So, maybe I should just go ahead with what makes CHAG SUKKOT tick, and sets it apart from the rest of the feasts, besides the seven days of wining and dining.

You already know that it is the only feast one celebrates outside of a place “upon which YAHWEH decides to place HIS Name” i.e. outside of the place of worship, and in a tent. I’ve been inundated with pictures of people’s interpretation of this spiritual directive, and amazed at the kind of ingenuity that had gone into coming up with the styles and the craftiness behind the work, while trying to leave it all simple in the main. It is such that in the end, I decided not to even post what we did at our own end in order to properly glory in the art that others put into their work. Next year maybe, we will come in better prepared.

Now, back to the matter, and as a matter of fact to where it all started, in the book of Leviticus 23:33-44, of which the highlights includes:
– Celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles/Shelters/Booths/Tents/Harvest/Ingathering/Sukkot on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, after the Feast of Trumpets and Day Of Atonement/Yom Kippur.
– A seven day feast of which the first is a Holy Convocation, meaning there will be a holy gathering of worship and offerings (prayers, or Thanksgiving these days), while one can go about his/her normal business on the other days, though returning to the tent while the feasts lasts.
– Because it is a feast of harvest, the whole tent(s) should be awash with greenery, “branches of palm trees, boughs of thick trees” and the likes, to be waved and rejoiced with.
– The feast is a “statute forever in your generations“.
– Then there’s the controversial part, where it is stated in verse 42, that “all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths” for which many who aren’t Israelite born but practice Judaism point to in Celebrating the feasts, without necessarily dwelling in booths or a tent as part of the observance.
– But the whole idea is “that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am YAHWEH your Elohim” (v.43)

Having settled the basis, let us move on to the significance of this feast, by going to the book of Hebrews 11 verse 8, where we are told that “By Faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing where he was going. (9) By faith he sujourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles (tents) with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.” Abraham dwelt in a tent, all of his life, much like Isaac, and Jacob, for a period. Have you ever wondered why they, especially Abraham decided to so do?

Abraham practically lived on the land that YAHWEH promised to give to him and to his descendants after him, yet he lived on it in tents. It is not enough to say he decided to do that because the land at the time belonged to others, as you reckon he bought part of the land to stay in from the owners, even bought the Cave of Machpelah that was used not just for the burial of his wife Sarah, but also for himself and his heirs with him of the same promise, and their wives, besides Rachel. Many of us live outside of our ancestral homes, yet we don’t dwell in tents in those places we have chosen to live in, even when they are not cities where it will look awkward living in tents, except one was living below a living wage and hadn’t as yet found one’s feet; but this wasn’t the case with a very wealthy Abraham with servants at his very beck and call.

The answer to this peculiarity regarding Abraham can be found in the same book of Hebrews 11 verse 10, “For he (Abraham) looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is Elohim.” Abraham understood early and immediately what today we have to be preached to and convinced to understand. He most probably must’ve gotten the hint from YAHWEH in one of their conversations, as we are told that he assuredly spoke with YAHWEH, as you can see in the case with the back and forth they held regarding Sodom and Gomorrah. He knew to trust that YAHWEH will do right by him, even when the only child of promise, Isaac was required of him. You’d see in Abraham the desire only to do what pleases YAHWEH regardless of whether or not the action or event will be favorable to him, and Hebrews 11 verses 17 to 19 has something to say about that.

Abraham understood that life must not necessarily consist of acquisition of wealth and building of estates and empires, and he understood that even as a very wealthy man. I mention this because in most cases the people of our time that you’d find living an ascetic life and be thinking that this world ain’t our home would most likely be someone who hasn’t had the opportunity to swim in wealth, enough to remove such insinuations in the ones’ head. Abraham, better put, “longed” for a city, different from the ones he lived in or heard about in those days and times. The houses of bricks and mortar didn’t matter any longer once the idea of “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is Elohim” crept into his mind. Nothing physical, ephemeral and superficial could satisfy him any longer. He probably settled for a tent because he would need to protect himself from the elements.

His descendants then dwelt in tents roaming and wandering about in a wilderness for forty years, where YAHWEH provided all of their needs. A situation “so good“, that the twelve spies would rather be there, than have Israelites move to the promised land, where they can be able to provide for their welfare and wellbeing, and with less supernatural involvement in their affairs; which sadly wasn’t YAHWEH’s intention, as HIS idea of righteousness for us isn’t one of isolation from the rest of the world, but rather one in which we would dwell in the world, undergo all of its rigours, and still be righteous, much like Yahshua did. And Yahshua like Abraham had no interest in the things of the world, also because he understood that none of those things we chase to acquire today was important in the general, spiritual and eternal scheme of things, hence he rejected Satan’s offer during the temptations.

Where does this leave us? At the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, the tents no matter how beautifully designed will be destroyed by fire, much like everything we see around us today. Consider that there were very great empires which did not make it to our time, but were the standards of yore. All of the glory of ancient Egypt are in museums today for instance. Hence in our pursuits of things that will make our earthly life enjoyable and less stressful, let us not go about getting them as if our very lives depended on them, and even if it did let us understand that YAHWEH who gives life, will sustain it. The King, and epitome of wisdom, Solomon aptly describes all of our pursuits as “Vanity“, and it is even worse when we fail to understand that riches and wealth are just means, and not the end in itself.

Please do not get me wrong and go on to be lazy and indolent, forgetting that one of the perks of this feast is that “… YAHWEH will bless you in all your increase, and in all the WORKS of your hands” (Deuteronomy 16:15), making it absolutely clear that YAHWEH is interested in what we do, and that riches and wealth, if properly acquired, can be utilised fully to do YAHWEH’s will, besides merely sustaining ourselves, bettering our social and physical environments and hopefully not to be used as tools of oppression against the less fortunate and privileged of our societies. CHAG SAMEACH!

‘kovich