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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The Festival of Tabernacles
The autumn pilgrim feast, eight days long, when men lived in leafy shelters, priests poured water at the altar and torches lit the temple courts. It carried hopes of rain, of resurrection and of a coming king.
The whole town camps out in the yard for a week, and the night the lights go up everyone is in the square. Tabernacles was one of the three feasts when pilgrims went up to Jerusalem. For eight days the men lived in shelters made of branches, remembering Israel's years in the desert, and worshipers carried palm branches and fruit. Each morning priests carried water up from the pool of Siloam and poured it out at the altar, and at night torches lit the temple courts. It was a harvest feast and a feast of hope.
Tabernacles ranked among the year's three great festivals and ran eight days in Jerusalem. Men lived in booths on rooftops or elsewhere, recalling God's care when Israel lived in booths in the wilderness, and the feast was known for its joy. Josephus explains that "when the season of the year is changing for winter, the law enjoins us to pitch tabernacles in every one of our houses." Worshipers carried "a branch of myrtle, and willow, and a bough of the palm-tree, with the addition of the pome citron." He tells how a crowd at this feast once pelted King Alexander Jannaeus at the altar with the citrons in their hands. For at least the first seven days priests carried water in procession from the pool of Siloam and poured it at the foot of the altar. The rite was first meant to bring rain, and pilgrims took home souvenir jars that pictured it. Zechariah 14, read at the feast with Ezekiel 47, promised living water flowing from the temple. Torches lit the city, and there was dancing in the Court of Women. Wright adds that wine was poured with the water and that the feast's prayers were for rain and for the resurrection of the dead. Like Passover, he writes, it was "a key symbol of the great national hope," the coming of the Messiah and freedom from Rome. A later source says the priests recited God's words in Isaiah 43:10 and 13, I am he, at this festival. Palm branches belonged especially to this feast, which Zechariah 14:16 says the remnant of all nations would one day keep.
An analogy: a harvest festival and a national day rolled into one, with every family sleeping in a shelter in the yard. People give thanks for the crops and remember the hard years, and the lights at night make them dream of what the nation could become.
The water and the lights of Tabernacles are the setting when Jesus offers living water, as in John 7:37-38, and calls himself the light of the world. Peter's offer to build three shelters at the transfiguration in Matthew 17:4 uses the feast's word for booths. Revelation 22:1-2 pictures a river of life flowing from God's throne, the hope that Zechariah 14 and Ezekiel 47 gave the feast.
Not a civic holiday. A national day is kept by the state. Tabernacles was commanded in the law and kept at the temple in Jerusalem, and its water and torch rites were acts of worship, prayers for rain and for the nation's hope.
Whether the I am recital is early enough to matter. Keener reports the later tradition that priests spoke God's words from Isaiah 43 at this feast. He is not sure it is early enough to stand behind John 8:58, while the cultural backgrounds notes cite the same later source for that verse without the caution. Second, where the living water of John 7:38 flows from. Keener's punctuation makes it flow from Jesus, as from the temple's foundation stone. The ESV and CSB Study Bibles and Wright read it as flowing from believers. The cultural backgrounds article on Tabernacles and living water hears the Jewish picture of Jerusalem as the navel of the earth behind from his belly. It reads Jesus as the Spirit's source, while allowing the other reading.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/john-8-12-30\/","n":"John 8:12-30, The light of the world by the treasury","s":"Jesus calls himself the light of the world. Told that testimony about himself does not count, he answers with the law's rule of two witnesses: himself and the Father who sent him.","r":"John 8:12-30"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/john-9-1-41\/","n":"John 9:1-41, A man born blind is put out","s":"Jesus puts mud on a blind beggar's eyes and sends him to wash in Siloam. Because it is the Sabbath the man is questioned, his parents are afraid, and when he defends Jesus he is thrown out.","r":"John 9:1-41"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/revelation-7-1-17\/","n":"Revelation 7:1-17, the sealing of the 144,000 and the crowd in white","s":"Four angels hold back the winds until God's servants are sealed on their foreheads, 144,000 from the tribes of Israel. Then John sees a crowd no one can count, from every nation, in white robes with palm branches, who have come out of the great tribulation and whom the Lamb will shepherd.","r":"Revelation 7:1-17"}
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on John 7:2, 7:37, 7:38, 8:12, 8:19-20 and 8:57-58
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on John 7:2, 8:12, 8:20, 8:58 and 9:7
- ESV Study Bible, study note on John 7:2
- CSB Study Bible, note on John 7:2
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 3.10.4 and 13.13.5, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, comments on John 7:1-9 and 7:31-39
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 7:9-12 and 7:15-16
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Tabernacles and the Promise of Living Water
