# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Feast of Tabernacles

See also Sukkot on Wikipedia; the Feast of Tabernacles in the 11th Edition; and the disclaimer.
TABERNACLES, Feast of. The original character of this Hebrew feast, celebrated at the close of the agricultural year as a thanksgiving for the produce of the seasons, but especially for the vintage and olive harvest, has been explained in Pentateuch, vol. xviii. p. 511. As such it is described in the old law of Exod. xxiii. 16, under the name of "the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year" (which, in the old Hebrew calendar, ran from autumn to autumn), "when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field" (comp. Exod. xxxiv. 22). The same feast is spoken of in Deut. xvi. 13 as "the feast of booths" (E.V. "tabernacles," whence the current name of the feast), when "thou hast gathered in thy corn and wine" from the corn-floor and the wine-press. No explanation is here given of the name "feast of booths"; but after the exile it was understood that during this feast the people assembled at Jerusalem were to live in booths constructed of branches of trees (Lev. xxiii. 39 sq.; Neh. viii. 14 sq.). The passage in Nehemiah, describing the celebration of the feast in 444 b.c., serves as a commentary on the post-exilic law in Leviticus, and from it we learn that the use of booths on that occasion had no foundation in traditional usage, but was based directly on the law, which then for the first time became generally known. According to the law in question, the booths were to be a memorial of the wilderness wandering (Lev. xxiii. 43), but of this there is no hint in Deuteronomy; and, while it is quite in the style of the later law to attach a new historical reference to an old name like "feast of booths," it is certain from Exodus that the feast had originally agricultural and not historical significance. As such it is exactly parallel to the vintage feasts of other ancient nations, e.g., to the Athenian Oschophoria. And, in particular, it is noteworthy that in Judges ix. 27 we find a vintage feast at Shechem among the Canaanites, from whom the Israelites first learned the ways of agricultural life, and from whom so much of the popular religion was copied. To acts of worship nominally addressed to Jehovah, but really to the Canaanite Baalim, Hosea expressly reckons rites celebrated "on all corn-floors" (ix. 1), expressing thanks for divine gifts of corn, wine, and oil (ii. 8 sq.), and in their context these allusions leave no doubt that the prophet refers, in part at least, to autumn feasts, in which Jehovah worship was mingled with Canaanite elements (comp. Wellhausen, Prol. zur Gesch. Isr., cap. 3, ii.; Eng. trans., p. 92 sq.). These feasts were local in character, but in northern Israel there was a great autumn feast at the royal sanctuary at Bethel (1 Kings xii. 33), as even in the days of Solomon there was such a feast at Jerusalem (1 Kings viii. 2). In the nature of things the local feasts were the older, and it was the fame of great shrines that gradually tended to draw worshippers from a distance to temples like those of Jerusalem and Bethel. Finally, the Deuteronomic law of the one sanctuary and the course of events which made that law the practical rule of the remnant of Israel put an end to all local religious feasts, but at the same time obscured the old significance of the festal cycle, and made room for the historical interpretation of the celebrations, now concentrated at the temple, which prevailed among the later Jews (comp. Passover and Pentecost). In their later form all the yearly feasts have exact times and rules. In Deuteronomy the autumn feast is not yet tied to a day — it could hardly be so while it was still essentially a harvest thanksgiving — but in the priestly legislation it is fixed to commence on the fifteenth day of the seventh month (Lev. xxiii. 34). In Deuteronomy the feast lasts seven days; Lev. xxiii. 36 adds an eighth, and this day ultimately became the most important (John vii. 37).
If we accept the conclusion that the autumn festival was originally a vintage feast celebrated in local sanctuaries, the name "feast of booths" admits of a natural explanation. The Canaanite feast at Shechem and the Hebrew feast at Shiloh (Judges xxi. 21) were partly celebrated abroad in the vineyards, and Hosea also knows such feasts on the open corn-floors. That it was usual to go forth and live in booths during the vintage may he concluded from Isa. i. 8; the same practice still prevails at Hebron (Robinson, Bibl. Res., ii. 81). If it was these booths erected among the vineyards that originally gave their name to the feast, we can understand how the book of Nehemiah recognizes the erection of booths within the city of Jerusalem as an innovation. No doubt at all feasts where there was a great concourse of visitors many would be tents; this seems to have been the case even in old Israel (Hos. xii. 9). But that is quite a different thing from the later observance, in which booths or bowers had to be made and used even by those who had houses of their own.