Feasts of the Bible

The Feast of Tabernacles: How It Points to Christ

Fall feast · Leviticus 23:34 · The fifteenth day of the seventh month, for seven days

The Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths, was Israel's greatest feast of joy, when the people lived for seven days in leafy shelters to remember how God dwelt among them in the wilderness and brought in the final harvest. Christians see it fulfilled in Jesus, for the Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and at this very feast He cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. It looks back to God dwelling with His people and forward to the day He will dwell with them forever.

The institutionSpeak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD.Leviticus 23:34 (KJV)

The feast God gave Israel

The last and greatest of the appointed feasts came at the close of the harvest, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month: The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD. For a week Israel was to live in booths, temporary shelters made of branches and leaves, so that their generations would know that God made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when He brought them out of Egypt. They took the fruit of goodly trees, palm branches, and willows, and rejoiced before the LORD.

It was the feast of ingathering, when the full harvest of the year was finally gathered in, and it was commanded to be a time of overflowing joy: thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, and thou shalt surely rejoice. By the time of Jesus it had grown rich with ceremony, including each morning a procession that drew water from the pool of Siloam and poured it out at the altar, praying for rain and remembering the water God gave from the rock in the desert, and each night the great lighting of lamps that filled the temple courts with light.

What the feast meant

Tabernacles held together memory and hope. It looked back to the wilderness, when Israel had no houses and no settled land, and God Himself dwelt in their midst in the pillar of cloud and fire, leading, sheltering, and providing at every step. Living in flimsy booths for a week reminded a now-settled people that their true security had never been in walls of stone but in the presence of God who tabernacled among them.

And it looked forward. The prophets came to see in Tabernacles a picture of the age to come, when the harvest of the earth would be gathered and God would dwell with all nations in unbroken joy. Its water pouring cried out for the Spirit yet to be poured; its lamps blazed for a light yet to shine; its shelters longed for a day when God would pitch His tent among His people and never fold it away. It was the most joyful feast, and also the most forward-looking.

Fulfilled in Christ

Fulfilled in ChristAnd the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.John 1:14 (KJV)

When John opens his Gospel, he chooses the language of this feast. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and beheld his glory. The word he uses for dwelt means, literally, to pitch a tent, to tabernacle. God did not merely visit; He tabernacled among us in Jesus, taking our very flesh as His booth, dwelling in our midst as once He dwelt in the wilderness, full of grace and truth.

And Jesus stepped into the very ceremonies of the feast and claimed them. In the last day, that great day of the feast, as the water was being poured out, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink, promising the Spirit who would flow like rivers of living water. Amid the lights of the feast He said, I am the light of the world. He is the true water, the true light, the true dwelling of God with humanity. In Him the joy of Tabernacles found its source.

The wonder of it

There is a beauty in the fact that Israel's happiest feast, its feast of God dwelling with His people, should be the one fulfilled in the incarnation, when God came to dwell with us in person. The whole longing of Tabernacles, that the God of the pillar of cloud might make His home among ordinary people, was answered when a child was born in Bethlehem and the eternal Word pitched His tent in human flesh.

And the wonder is not yet complete. The last vision of Scripture returns to this very language: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them. What Tabernacles pictured, and what the incarnation began, will be finished when God dwells with His people forever, and every tear is wiped away. The most forward-looking feast points to the last and best of all God's promises.

From tent to temple to flesh

The whole Bible can be read as the story of God making a home with His people. In the wilderness He gave Moses the pattern for a tabernacle, a tent of curtains and gold where His glory would rest above the mercy seat, so that He might dwell among them as they journeyed. Later Solomon built the temple, and the glory of the LORD filled the house. Yet even that was a shadow, for the God who made heaven and earth cannot be contained in a house of stone.

In Jesus the dwelling became something new and unimaginable. The eternal Word took not a tent of curtains nor a house of stone but a body of flesh, and tabernacled among us. God was now present not in a room but in a Person, one who could be seen and touched and known. And He is not finished. By the Spirit He now makes His home in His people, so that our very bodies become the temple of the living God. The story that began with a tent in the desert is moving toward its end, when the tabernacle of God will be with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and wipe away every tear.

How it speaks to us now

Tabernacles invites you into joy, but a joy grounded in a stunning truth: God wants to dwell with you. He is not a distant deity content to be admired from afar. In Jesus He tabernacled among us, and by His Spirit He makes His home in all who receive Him. If you thirst, the invitation of the great day of the feast still stands: come to Him and drink. And if your life feels as fragile as a booth of branches, remember that your security was never meant to be in what you can build, but in the God who has chosen to dwell with you, now and forever.

A note in honesty: Christians read these feasts as shadows whose substance is Christ, in the words of the apostle Paul (Colossians 2:17), and they are cherished across the traditions as one of the clearest windows into the gospel. Faithful Jewish readers understand them differently, and we hold ours with respect and without contempt. The spring feasts were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus, to the very day; the fall feasts many see as pointing toward His return, though Scripture forbids the setting of dates, for no one knows the day or the hour. We marvel at the pattern without pretending to a calendar God has not given.

Related: The Day of Atonement · The Sabbath · Who is Jesus · All the feasts of the Bible