Nehemiah 7 & 8, Revelation 18: 18-24, Revelation 19: 1-10, Proverbs 30: 11-23
Nehemiah 8: 17 (ESV)
“And all the assembly of those who had returned from the
captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the
son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very
great rejoicing.”
In verse 17 from Nehemiah 8, the people who returned from captivity
decided to reenact the celebration of booths or the Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot.
God commanded the people to live in booths for seven days as a reminder of how
God provided booths for them when they were wandering in the desert after they
left Egypt. The booths are temporary shelters with four sides called a Sukkah with
an open roof made of palm branches.
When I read verse 17, I was reminded of how I first saw my
first Sukkot in college. A group of students had made these temporary shelters and
left them up for seven days in a field that was between the two main college
dorms. They called it Sukkot or the Feast of Booths. At the end of the seven
days, they threw a big party afterwards and we all celebrated. I wonder now if
a revival was going on in campus at that time, like what was going on during
the time written about in Nehemiah. Whatever was going on, it’s nice to know
that college students celebrated God taking caring of his people when they were
wandering in the wilderness. Perhaps they thought of college as a booth or
temporary shelter from real life, and was celebrating how God was still taking
care of them even in the wilderness of college life.
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