The Sukkah: God’s Protective Covering
Have you been longing for this special time Sukkot, provoked by the symptoms of nostalgia of paradise? This nostalgia is an inner longing for a better, more peaceful and harmonious place, something that so many faithful believers in the Tanach longed for as well.
It was Mircea Eliades, an anthropologist and prolific writer, who discovered that at the core of the world’s religions lies a belief, a conviction of a past lost period of time when man was in harmony with God and with His creation. We can understand that when reading about the pre-fall conditions in the Garden of Eden. But after the fall of man, we find the subsequent rise of diverse religious systems attempting, and deeply longing to find ways to restore this lost paradise.
And the Bible qualifies and proves this longing. We are told in Hebrews 11 that the believers spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures, all of them, had this inner knowledge and yearning for this place. The Spirit describes this paradise as the city which has foundations, whose Architect and Builder is God (vs.10). It was a powerful reality for those believers who longed for this wonderful, eternal home. Sukkoth brings us to this very threshold, not only reviving this inner homesickness but pointing to the fulfillment of the many prophecies found in the Book of Ezekiel.
What is truly beautiful here is that the Scriptures tell us that God also yearns for this reunion of peace. Afterall, this is His moment as well, and it was given a special and unique name in Leviticus 23: 39b where He says, You shall celebrate the Feast of the LORD for seven days. The Feast of the LORD is God’s Feast. Although He has given us others feasts to celebrate only this one is called His Feast, showing God’s great longing for a time where we will be together with Him.
This longing is further manifested when we read about the sukkah (the hut or booth) itself. We see it in verse 43, which is the last one dealing with Sukkoth. It says, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. Something in this verse attracted some rabbinical commentators. The Lord says here that the children of Israel dwelt in booths or sukkahs, but nowhere during the Exodus are we told that the Israelites actually lived in sukkahs. They lived in tents; the Hebrew word for tents is ohel, and not sukkah. Why use the word sukkah when there weren’t any? This is when the rabbinical commentators understood that the sukkah is so much more than a booth but rather it is a symbol of the presence of God over Israel during the Exodus. It was symbolic of the Shekinah Glory’s presence.
The word sukkah itself is from the word suk סׄךְ; it means to protect, to cover, to defend and the sukkah itself speaks of a pavilion of protection. In the Zohar, they speak of the sukkah as the shelter of faith, a reminder of the love and the security we have in God.
But for us today, the sukkah speaks even louder for we too are journeying in the wilderness and on our way to the promised eternal abode. We are told that the Spirit of God now…dwells in us, 1Cor.3:16, and like a sukkah, like a pavilion of protection we have that full assurance that greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.
And we can perceive the joy of the Lord in that He even added another day to this feast. He says in Leviticus 23: 36, ‘For seven days you shall present an offering by fire to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation and present an offering by fire to the LORD; it is an assembly.
There is an eighth day added to the feast, but notice the words used at the end of vs.36, it is an assembly. The Hebrew word for assembly is azeret. Some rabbinical commentators see the root word azar, which means to detain, to hold back, to keep close to someone.
And so, they read it as, on the eighth day, you will be detained one more day. They understood this as if God were saying, I have detained you with Me one more day. This can be likened to a king who invites his children to feast with him for a certain number of days. When the time comes for them to leave, he says, “Children, please. Stay with me for one more day. I hate to see you go.” (Rashi)
What were the Jews to do during these seven plus one days at the Temple, day after day?
They were to eat a lot. Judging from the number of sacrifices offered, every day was a banquet, every single day was a great feast of great fellowship with God. How much food did they have? Besides all the harvest they brought with them, we can count some 200 animals sacrificed for 7 days. And the number of these animals were well chosen. For example, the number of bulls was 70. Does that ring a bell? Here the rabbis connected the 70 bulls with the 70 nations mentioned in the Table of the Nations in Genesis 10. The connecting point is that Israel herself started out as a people of 70 when they went down to Egypt (Gen. 46:27). They started as so few in number but flourished while in Egypt to some three million people. So, the rabbis understood that Sukkot is the time when Israel will finally be the priestly nation and fulfill the reason for her election, that is, to be that priestly nation on behalf of the other nations of the world.
What about the 98 lambs? An interesting interpretation is given to us in the Targum of Jerusalem on Numbers 29:32. This is what they say, The number of all the lambs are ninety-eight in order to atone for the ninety-eight curses. They were referring to the 98 curses found in the Book of Deuteronomy chapter 28. There were curses given as a punishment for Israel because of disobedience to the Word of God, the last curse of which was the sufferings in the Diaspora.
They saw one lamb for each curse, for they knew that the purpose for the lamb was for the removal of sin. The Targum on Isaiah 52:13 speaks of the Messiah as the Lamb of God. It begins the account with these words, Behold, my servant, the Messiah, shall prosper, he shall be exalted and increase, and shall be very strong. And then they tell us how He is the Lamb of God by dying for the sins of Israel.