The Feast of Tabernacles 2011

Wheat (Wikipedia)

According to the received, calculated Hebrew calendar – a calendar that works according to the same essential principles in force in Jesus’ day and even in Moses’s day – tonight is the first night of the Feast of Tabernacles. [In Hebrew the name is Chag ha-Sukkot: (חג הסכות).] More literally it is the Feast of Booths, but Tabernacles has more of a ring to it and based on the King James Version, we in the Living Church of God call the Feast so.

Among the biblical texts relating to these days are the following (I like to cite the Revised Standard Version preferentially due to its combination of style and overall accuracy):

(Leviticus 23:33 RSV) And the LORD said to Moses,
(Leviticus 23:34 RSV) “Say to the people of Israel, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the feast of booths to the LORD.
(Leviticus 23:35 RSV) On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work.
(Leviticus 23:36 RSV) Seven days you shall present offerings by fire to the LORD; on the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present an offering by fire to the LORD; it is a solemn assembly; you shall do no laborious work.

(Leviticus 23:39 RSV) “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall keep the feast of the LORD seven days; on the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest.
(Leviticus 23:40 RSV) And you shall take on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.
(Leviticus 23:41 RSV) You shall keep it as a feast to the LORD seven days in the year; it is a statute for ever throughout your generations; you shall keep it in the seventh month.
(Leviticus 23:42 RSV) You shall dwell in booths for seven days; all that are native in Israel shall dwell in booths,
(Leviticus 23:43 RSV) that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

(Deuteronomy 16:13 RSV) “You shall keep the feast of booths seven days, when you make your ingathering from your threshing floor and your wine press;
(Deuteronomy 16:14 RSV) you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your manservant and your maidservant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.
(Deuteronomy 16:15 RSV) For seven days you shall keep the feast to the LORD your God at the place which the LORD will choose; because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.
(Deuteronomy 16:16 RSV) “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place which he will choose: at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed;
(Deuteronomy 16:17 RSV) every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which he has given you.”

The Feast of Tabernacles and the other great pilgrimage feasts were revealed before the sacrificial system was instituted (cf. Exodus 23:15-17; 34:18-24). In Leviticus 23 all the Festivals of the LORD are spelled out, with their basic sacrificial requirements of the time. In Numbers 28-29 they are more fully put in the context of the sacrificial system and linked to the observance of the days of the New Moon. Jesus kept the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles and its associated eighth day or Last Great Day, taught during it and performed miracles during it (John 7:1-10:21). He also pointed out that their observance by Christians would not depend on a specific location for worship or (by implication) of the existence of the sacrificial system, but rather of worship “in spirit and in truth” – with the right attitude and with right understanding (John 4:19-24).

Most regrettably, several of the Ante-Nicene Catholic Church Fathers used a misinterpretation of the following text as a pretext for throwing out the Sabbath, Festivals, Holy Days and New Moons with the sacrificial system:

(Isaiah 1:13 NKJV) Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies– I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.
(Isaiah 1:14 NKJV) Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.

They also misprepresented Colossians 2:16-17, even to the point of removing an emphatic pronoun which changes the whole meaning of verse 17. The Byzantine Text makes the same omission, forcing the insertion of the elliptical verb thus: “but the body (is) of Christ“. But the Received Text and the GNT NA27 (the standard modern critical edition) have “but (let) the body of the Christ (judge these matters)” – “the body of the Christ”, an indivisible definite noun phrase, referring symbolically to the Church (cf. Colossians 1:18 and Ephesians 1:22-23). It is remarkable that no one outside the Sabbath-keeping Churches of God has seen this distinction or thought through what it truly means (not even the editor of the often-helpful Complete Jewish Bible). Even the grammatical nicety that a noun phrase in Greek either must have pronouns attached to each noun or else to neither seems to have been overlooked, even though the presence or absence of one pronoun changes the whole meaning of verse 17.

In the future, under Jesus Christ’s world rule, the whole world (practically speaking, representatives thereof) will keep the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem specifically (Zechariah 14:16-19). The Living Church of God publishes a booklet, The Holy Days – God’s Master Plan, that describes why Christians should keep it today in anticipation of that glorious time.

Blessings in Messiah (ברכות במשיח),
John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב)

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