The Feast of Tabernacles (Booths or Shelters) is celebrated on the 15th day of Ethanim (Tishri) the seventh month in the sacred calendar.
This feast begins a week during which all 'Israelites born' are required to live in temporary dwellings or shelters. (Lev. 23:39-43). It is, at its basic level, a memorial of the time when Yahweh made His people live in tents and temporary shelters in the wilderness when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.
At a higher level it is also a reminder or memorial of the fact that the Almighty came down from heaven to live in a Tabernacle (a tent) amidst His people Israel. (Exodus 33:7-11 & chapters 35 to 40)
The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible has this to say about the Tabernacle in the wilderness. "The movable sanctuary in the form of a tent which God directed Moses at Sinai to make, that God might dwell as king among His people." (Exodus 25:8-9) Hence it was called:
From these and other passages we can see that the literal Tabernacle which Moses built according to the Almighty's design was merely a type, a shadow, a physical expression of:
Consequently, we may say that the Feast of Tabernacles is also a memorial
of the Almighty's astonishing condescension to come down to earth to
tabernacle or pitch His tent with humanity in the person of His Son. For
Jesus Christ is Immanuel, GOD WITH US, God incarnate; that is the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel taking
up his abode in the tabernacle of a human body, in order to redeem and
enable mankind to obey His eternal law.
Romans 8:3 | "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." |
Is it any wonder that the profound reality of this fact (that God is going
to tabernacle with mankind for eternity) drew from the lips of an angel
these amazing words:
Revelation 21:3 | "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." |