For seven days each year, Israel lived in huts made of branches. Leviticus 23:43 gives the reason: “That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” In Nehemiah 8:15-16 the people fetch olive, pine, myrtle and palm branches and build booths on rooftops, in courtyards and in the streets. Elsewhere a booth is a keeper’s shelter, a picture of something flimsy (Job 27:18). The command itself is in Leviticus 23:40-43.
8 verses
And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.
And ye shall keep it a feast unto the LORD seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month.
Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths:
That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
And that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, Go forth unto the mount, and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written.
So the people went forth, and brought them, and made themselves booths, every one upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the street of the water gate, and in the street of the gate of Ephraim.
He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh.
And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
A hut made of the branches of a tree. In such tabernacles Jacob sojourned for a season at a place named from this circumstance Succoth (Gen. 33:17). Booths were erected also at the feast of Tabernacles (q.v.), Lev. 23:42, 43, which commemorated the abode of the Israelites in the wilderness.