Today we are looking at the third of the three other feasts besides Passover that God set up and commanded his people to keep every year. We are in chapter twenty-three of Exodus with our word for today which is actually a phrase used for the first time in the Bible. וְחַ֤ג הָֽאָסִף֙ feast of ingathering. It is used 2 times in the Old Testament. Let’s look at both. Exodus 23:16 You shall keep the וְחַ֤ג הָֽאָסִף֙Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Exodus 34:22 Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the וְחַג֙ הָֽאָסִ֔יף Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. Another name for the feast of ingathering is the feast of tabernacles or feast of booths. It lasted for seven days. On the first day, booths were constructed of fresh branches of trees. Each person would collect twigs of myrtle, willow, and palm in the area of Jerusalem for construction of the booths. Everyone was to live for seven days in these during the festival, to remember when their fathers lived in such booths after their exodus from Egypt. We find this reference in Leviticus. Leviticus 23:40-43 On the first day you are to take branches from luxuriant trees—from palms, willows and other leafy trees—and rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. Celebrate this as a festival to the Lord for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month. Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
A good example of this is found in Nehemiah as part of the reforms that God brought about through Nehemiah and Ezra, which I will close with. Nehemiah 8:13-18 On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and the Levites, gathered around Ezra the teacher to give attention to the words of the Law. They found written in the Law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month and that they should proclaim this word and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem: “Go out into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and wild olive trees, and from myrtles, palms and shade trees, to make temporary shelters”—as it is written. So the people went out and brought back branches and built themselves temporary shelters on their own roofs, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God and in the square by the Water Gate and the one by the Gate of Ephraim. The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them. From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great. Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God. They celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly.
