Scripture Daily

Context No. 1465 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 23:39-44: in context

39“‘So on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruits 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. 40You shall take on the first day the fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days. 41You shall keep it as a feast to the LORD seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations. You shall keep it in the seventh month. 42You shall dwell in temporary shelters for seven days. All who are native-born in Israel shall dwell in temporary shelters, 43that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in temporary shelters when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’” 44So Moses declared to the children of Israel the appointed feasts of the LORD.

This passage describes the Feast of Tabernacles, kept for seven days after the harvest is gathered in. The people are to take branches of trees and rejoice before the LORD, and, most distinctively, to live in temporary shelters, booths made of branches, for the seven days. And God gives the reason: 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. Once a year, the settled people were to leave their solid houses and live in flimsy shelters, remembering the wilderness.

The heart of this feast is a deliberate act of remembering, and remembering something particular: that they had once been wanderers, pilgrims without a settled home, wholly dependent on God for shelter and provision in the wilderness. Now they were settled in the land, living in solid houses, gathering harvests; and precisely because they were comfortable and established, they were commanded once a year to leave their houses and live in booths, flimsy temporary shelters, to remember what they had once been. The point was not misery but memory: to keep alive the knowledge that they were a pilgrim people who had depended entirely on God, lest prosperity make them forget it. And the feast was to be kept with rejoicing; the remembering of their dependence and impermanence was not meant to be grim but glad. There is wisdom in this for those of us who grow settled and comfortable. It is easy, once we are established, to forget that we too are pilgrims, that our security is more temporary than it feels, that we depend on God as fully as any wanderer in a wilderness. The feast of booths built a deliberate reminder into the year, a return to the flimsy shelter that told the truth about our impermanence and dependence. And it did so with joy, because remembering rightly that we are dependent pilgrims does not lead to anxiety but to a glad reliance on the God who sheltered his people in the wilderness and shelters us still.

Have I grown so settled and comfortable that I forget I am a pilgrim, more dependent on God and more impermanent than my solid life suggests, and can I remember it, as the feast of booths taught, not with anxiety but with a glad reliance on the God who shelters his people?

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