Did They Really Dwell in Booths?

Three questions from inside the booth

Chag sameach, and Shabbat shalom. This year the first day of Sukkot falls on Shabbat, so the lulav rests today. We have only the booth itself, the roof over our heads, and the haftarah. That is enough, because the booth raises three questions worth sitting with.

The first is historical. The Torah says we sit in sukkot because Hashem made Israel dwell in sukkot when He brought them out of Egypt. Yet Bilaam looked down on the camp and said, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob.” Moshe tells the people, “Get you into your tents again.” Korach’s rebellion ends with the earth swallowing tents. So which was it: booths or tents?

The second is practical. Every other roof we build is meant to keep the weather out. This one is meant to let the sky in. We are told to lay the schach thin enough to see the stars. Then it rains, and we carry the kugel back into the house. What kind of shelter is built not to shelter?

The third is prophetic. Why is today’s haftarah Zechariah 14, a chapter about war, the Mount of Olives splitting, and all nations coming up to Jerusalem to keep this very feast? And what does any of it have to do with Yeshua and the book of Revelation?

The three questions have one answer. The booth was never about the branches. It is about who is spreading the covering, and when we will see Him do it again.

Booths or tents?

Start with what the Torah actually says, because you will sometimes hear that it never says Israel lived in booths. It does, in so many words:

“Ye shall dwell in booths seven days… 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 Hashem your God.” (Leviticus 23:42–43)

So the verse is not in doubt. The puzzle is real all the same, because everywhere else in the wilderness narrative the people live in ohalim, tents. Our sages noticed this long before we did. Their answer is one of the best-known disputes in the Talmud (Sukkah 11b):

• Rabbi Eliezer: the sukkot were the ananei hakavod, the clouds of glory. Targum Onkelos translates the verse the same way: “in the shade of clouds I made the children of Israel dwell.”
• Rabbi Akiva: sukkot mamash, actual booths that they built.

Both readings have roots in the text.

Rabbi Akiva has geography on his side. Israel’s first stop out of Egypt was a place called Sukkot: “the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth” (Exodus 12:37). The name was not new. When Yaakov came back from Lavan, “he built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth” (Genesis 33:17). A sukkah in the Torah’s first usage is a branch shelter for livestock, the kind of thing people on the move throw up for shade. Tents for sleeping and branch shelters against the sun is simply how pastoral people lived, and still live.

Rabbi Eliezer has theology on his side. Watch what happens the moment Israel leaves the place called Sukkot. “They took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham… And Hashem went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud” (Exodus 13:20–21). Sukkot is where the cloud begins. The psalmist remembers it this way: “He spread a cloud for a covering” (Psalm 105:39). In Hebrew, paras anan l’masach: “He spread (paras) a cloud (anan) for a covering (l’masach).” Masach means a screen or covering, the same word the Torah uses for the screen at the entrance of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26:36). It comes from the root s-k-k, the same root as schach, the covering on our roof. Hashem laid schach over the whole nation.

The prophet Hoshea, rebuking Israel, uses the two words interchangeably and points them forward: “I… will yet make thee to dwell in tents, as in the days of the solemn feast” (Hosea 12:9). Tents, booths, the feast, and a promise of “yet.”

So we do not have to choose. They lived in tents. They sheltered under branches. And over all of it lay the cloud. But notice the grammar of Leviticus 23:43. It does not say “your fathers dwelt in booths.” It says “I made them dwell.” Hashem is the subject of the verb. Whatever the booths were made of, the commandment asks us to remember who provided the shade.

A roof you can see through

Now the roof. First, a small correction to how we usually say it. The Mishnah does not require that we see the stars. It requires that the schach give more shade than sun (Sukkah 1:1). The Talmud even says a sukkah thatched as thick as a house is kosher “even though the stars cannot be seen through it” (Sukkah 22b). Seeing the stars is the preferred way, the way the Shulchan Aruch recommends (Orach Chaim 631:3). It is a hiddur, not the definition.

But the preference tells us something, and so do the rules around it.

The schach must be something that grew from the ground and has been cut off from it: branches, reeds, palm fronds. It cannot be a manufactured roof. The sukkah cannot be taller than twenty amot, and Rabbah explains why: “that your generations may know.” Above twenty amot, a person no longer notices the covering over his head (Sukkah 2a). The sukkah is built to be seen. Rava gives the principle behind it all: for seven days, “go out from your permanent dwelling and sit in a temporary dwelling.”

Then there is the rain. The Mishnah says that if it rains hard enough to spoil the food, you may go inside, and it offers a parable. It is like a servant who comes to pour a cup for his master, and the master throws the pitcher in his face (Sukkah 2:9). Rain in the sukkah is not a failure of engineering. It is a message, and the only response the sukkah allows is to go in.

So the sukkah is not designed to protect us. It is designed to expose us: to the weather, to the neighbors, to the sky. That exposure is the lesson. For the rest of the year the house tells us a quiet lie, that we are safe because of walls we built. For seven days we move out from under that lie and sit under branches, looking up.

The Talmud goes one step further. Rabbi Zeira derives the requirement that a sukkah provide shade from a prophecy, not from the Torah’s festival chapter:

“And Hashem will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion… a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence [chuppah]. And there shall be a tabernacle [sukkah] for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.” (Isaiah 4:5–6)

There is the answer to our question. The sukkah that does keep out the storm and the rain exists, but it is not ours, and it has not come yet. Isaiah promises it for Zion in the day of redemption: the cloud by day and the fire by night, the same signs that covered Israel in the wilderness, returned and spread over Jerusalem as a sukkah.

Our sukkah is the model and the longing, not the fulfillment. We lay the schach thin on purpose. We are not building the real shelter. We are leaving a gap to watch for it. David said it for us: “In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion” (Psalm 27:5), b’sukko, in His sukkah. The psalm we have said every day since Elul names the booth that actually protects, and it is His.

What Sukkot is prophetic of

The calendar of the High Holy Days tells a story. Rosh Hashanah is called Yom HaZikaron in the Torah, the day of remembrance: it looks back to creation and the Akedah. Yom Kippur speaks in the present tense: “on this day shall he make an atonement for you.” Sukkot faces forward. Every reading the sages chose for it bears this out.

Zechariah 14, today’s haftarah. The nations gather against Jerusalem. Then “his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives” (14:4), and the mountain splits. “Living waters shall go out from Jerusalem” (14:8). “Hashem shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Hashem, and his name one” (14:9), the verse that closes every Aleinu. And then the verse that explains why we read this chapter today:

“Every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, Hashem of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” (Zechariah 14:16)

Of all the festivals, the prophet names this one as the feast of the world to come, and the feast of the nations. The next verse says the families that do not come up “upon them shall be no rain” (14:17). This is the season the Mishnah says the world is judged for water (Rosh Hashanah 1:2). The rain that drives us out of our sukkah is the rain the nations will one day come to Jerusalem to ask for.

The seventy bulls. Across the seven days the Temple offered thirteen bulls, then twelve, then eleven, down to seven: seventy in all (Numbers 29). Rabbi Elazar says they correspond to the seventy nations (Sukkah 55b). Israel was praying for the nations at this feast long before the nations came to it. Zechariah simply tells us that one day they will be in the courtyard to see it.

David’s song (2 Samuel 22). It describes Hashem coming down to save him: “He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet… And he made darkness pavilions round about him” (2 Samuel 22:10–12). The word for pavilions is sukkot. When Hashem descends to rescue, Scripture pictures Him surrounded by sukkot of cloud. The clouds of glory are His booth. This chapter is the haftarah of Ha’azinu in years when that parashah falls between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, so in those years the synagogue hears it just days before we build our booths. This year Ha’azinu fell on Shabbat Shuvah, which takes Hosea 14, Shuvah Yisrael, instead. The same song appears as Psalm 18, where verse 12 calls the cloud sukkato, His sukkah.

Tomorrow’s haftarah, 1 Kings 8. Shlomo dedicated the Temple “at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month”: on Sukkot. The priests brought the ark in, “and the cloud filled the house of Hashem, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud” (8:10–11). The cloud that covered the camp came to rest on the house. That is what the festival remembers, and what it waits to see again.

The fallen booth of David. Amos promises: “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen” (Amos 9:11), sukkat David hanofelet. The Talmud reads this verse as a name for Mashiach, bar nafli, “the son of the fallen” (Sanhedrin 96b). And every day of this festival, in the Grace after Meals, we add: HaRachaman hu yakim lanu et sukkat David hanofelet, may the Merciful One raise up for us the fallen booth of David.

Put these together and Sukkot stops being a history lesson. It is a rehearsal. We leave our houses, sit under a covering we know is not enough, look up, pray for the nations, pour water, and ask for the Son of David. We are practicing for a feast that has not yet been fulfilled.

Yeshua and the sukkah

The apostolic writings were written by Jews who kept this feast, and they speak its language. The Greek Bible translated sukkah as skēnē, and the festival as skēnopēgia, the booth-pitching. Hold on to that word.

The glory that tabernacled. Yochanan opens his gospel: “And 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). “Dwelt” is eskēnōsen, pitched his booth. Notice whose glory it is: the glory of the Father. This is the pattern of the Mishkan and the Temple. The Shekhinah rested in the Tabernacle, yet the Tabernacle was not God. The cloud filled Shlomo’s house, yet the house was a house. Yochanan says that the same Presence that once rested on a tent of goat hair came to rest on a man, a son of David, and that those who stood near him saw it. The vessel reveals; the Source remains the Father.

The Messiah at the feast. John 7 takes place entirely at Sukkot. Every morning of the festival the priests drew water from the Shiloach and poured it on the altar, and every night the courts were lit so brightly that “there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that was not lit” (Mishnah Sukkah 5:3). “Whoever has not seen the rejoicing of the water-drawing has never seen rejoicing in his life” (Sukkah 5:1). The Jerusalem Talmud asks why the place was called the House of Drawing, and answers: because from there they drew ruach hakodesh, the Holy Spirit (Yerushalmi Sukkah 5:1), from Isaiah 12:3: “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation”, mima’aynei ha-yeshuah.

Into that exact setting:

“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Yeshua stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit…)” (John 7:37–39)

He is standing in the Temple courts on the last great day, Hoshana Rabbah or Shemini Atzeret (readers differ on which), while the water of Zechariah 14:8 is being acted out on the altar. He says the living water of Zechariah will come, and it will come through him. Soon after, still in the Temple, he says, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), with the ashes of the great lamps still in the court.

The booths on the mountain. On the mountain of transfiguration, Moshe and Eliyahu appear beside Yeshua, and Kefa says the most Sukkot sentence in the Bible: “Let us make here three tabernacles” (Matthew 17:4). Then “a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud” (17:5), the Father’s voice, saying “hear ye him,” the words of Deuteronomy 18:15 about the prophet like Moshe. Kefa wanted to build booths with his hands. Hashem answered with the cloud. It is an ushpizin scene, and Moshe himself is one of the guests.

Received by a cloud. And the last time the disciples saw him: “a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). The angels told them, “this same Yeshua… shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (1:11). “Behold, he cometh with clouds” (Revelation 1:7), as Daniel saw: “one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven” (Daniel 7:13).

This is why we leave the gap in the schach. The cloud that covered Israel, that filled the Temple, that overshadowed the mountain, that received Messiah into heaven, is the cloud he will return with. We sit where we can see the sky because that is where he said to look.

Sukkot in the book of Revelation

When Yochanan was shown the end of the story, he saw Sukkot. Two scenes make it plain.

The multitude with palms (Revelation 7:9–17).

“After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.”

Read it slowly as a Jew on Sukkot:

• Palms in their hands. The lulav, which we set down today for Shabbat, is in the hands of the redeemed.
• Of all nations. The seventy bulls have become seventy peoples, standing in person, as Zechariah 14:16 promised.
• “Salvation to our God.” That is the cry of the Hoshanot. Hoshana, save now, has become salvation belongs to our God: the prayer answered.
• “He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them” (7:15). The verb is skēnōsei: He will spread His sukkah over them.
• “Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat” (7:16). This is Isaiah 4:6, “a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat.” The sukkah that really protects has arrived.
• “The Lamb… shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters” (7:17). The water of the Temple courts, the wells of salvation, and the Messiah as shepherd, the chief of Micah’s shepherds whom we welcome as ushpizin.

Notice the order of the verse. The One on the throne spreads the sukkah. The Lamb shepherds the people beneath it. It is the same order as the Transfiguration: the Father speaks from the cloud, and the Son is the one to hear.

The tabernacle of God with men (Revelation 21–22).

“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, and be their God.” (21:3)

Skēnē and skēnōsei again. This is the Torah’s own promise in Leviticus 26:11–12, “I will set my tabernacle among you… and will walk among you,” and Ezekiel’s, “My tabernacle also shall be with them” (37:27). The whole city has become a sukkah. “I saw no temple therein” (21:22), because the Presence that once needed a building now covers everything. “The nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it” (21:24). Then comes the river: “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (22:1), Zechariah’s living waters and Ezekiel’s river, with leaves on its trees “for the healing of the nations” (22:2).

And finally, the answer to why we look up through the schach: “And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (22:4). All week the sukkah trains our eyes upward through the gaps. At the end of the story the gaps close. Nothing stands between the people and the Presence, and no one needs to peer through branches any more.

Revelation does not replace Sukkot with something else. It shows Sukkot kept in full, the feast Zechariah said the nations would keep, under the covering Isaiah said Hashem would spread.

Sitting under the gap

So, did the Israelites really dwell in sukkot? Yes. They lived in tents, sheltered under branches, and were covered by a cloud. Hashem says of all of it, “I made them dwell.” The booth remembers who spread the covering.

Why a roof that does not keep out the rain? Because this sukkah is not the shelter. It is the window. The sukkah that shields from storm and rain is the one Isaiah promised over Zion, the one Yochanan saw spread over the nations. Ours is thin on purpose, so that we keep looking for His.

What is Sukkot prophetic of? The day Hashem is King over all the earth, His name one. The nations come up to Jerusalem with palms in their hands. Living water flows from the city. The fallen booth of David is raised, and the cloud that received Messiah brings him back.

This year the first day is Shabbat. The lulav waits and we cannot shake it, and there is a lesson in that too. Shabbat is the taste of the world to come, and today the festival of the world to come sits inside it. We do nothing. We rest under a covering we did not earn, look up, and wait.

So tonight, before you go to sleep, go out and sit in the sukkah for one more minute. Sit away from the lamp and let your eyes adjust. Look up through the schach. If it is clear, you will see a few stars between the branches. That view through the gaps is the whole festival: a people sitting in a temporary house, looking up, waiting for the cloud.

Hoshana. Save now. And may we see it soon, b’meheirah b’yameinu.

One invitation before we close. This is the season of the year that looks forward, so we will spend the whole week looking forward together. Throughout the days of Sukkot we will study what Scripture says about the End Times and the Last Days: the prophecies of Zechariah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, the words of Yeshua, and the visions of Revelation. Join us each day during Shacharit at 10 am and Arvit at 7 pm.

Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom.