Dwelling in His shadow

Dwelling in His shadow

There are houses you live in for years and almost forget were ever built. The walls simply stand, the roof keeps out the rain, the heating works, you know where the light switch is without thinking. Everything feels self-evident. And then comes Sukkot: a feast in which God commands Israel to come out of the ordinary house for a few days and stay in a temporary dwelling. No stone wall to lean on, no roof that fully closes, no building of which you can say: this will still stand a hundred years. A sukkah is by definition more fragile than the house you came from. And perhaps that is exactly the point.

For Sukkot asks an uncomfortable but freeing question: what actually carries us? Our house? Our income? Our planning? Our health? Our knowledge? Our own strength? Or the God who carried Israel through the wilderness?

My holy Name — God’s feasts

The reading does not begin at once with the booth. Leviticus 22 first closes with rules about the offerings: an animal must stay some days with its mother, an ox or sheep may not be slaughtered on the same day as its young, a thank-offering must be eaten as God appointed. And then God says: “You shall not profane My holy Name, that I may be hallowed among the children of Israel. I am the LORD who sanctifies you.” That is an important beginning, for the feasts that follow are not first of all pleasant traditions Israel invented. God calls them “My feasts” — moadim, appointed times, meeting times.

God determines not only that His people serve Him, but that time itself can be hallowed. A day can be different from another day; a season can be set apart. Not because calendar dates have magical power, but because God teaches His people not to let their life be determined only by production, labour and planning. There are moments when He says: stop, come, listen, remember, celebrate, humble yourself, rejoice. Time too belongs to God.

The sabbath comes first

Strikingly, Leviticus 23 begins with the sabbath. Before Passover, Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur or Sukkot are named, there stands the seventh day: six days may work be done, the seventh is rest. So from the start it is clear that God’s calendar does not consist only of a few special feast days a year; the rhythm of receiving, stopping and trusting is already there every week. The sabbath says: you are not only what you produce, the world does not turn only because you keep it turning, you may stop — and God stays God. That is the same lesson that soon becomes tangible in the sukkah. A person can build, work, gather; but in the end he does not live because he controls everything.

The way through the year

Then Leviticus 23 runs, as it were, through the whole year: Passover, unleavened bread, firstfruits, Shavuot, Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur, and finally Sukkot. It is as though the year itself tells a story: deliverance, first fruit, harvest, waking up, affliction, atonement — and then joy. And note the order: Sukkot does not come before Yom Kippur, it comes after. That is no unimportant detail. First there is the day on which Israel humbles itself, the day of atonement; and then God says: “You shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.” Biblical joy is not pretending sin does not exist. It comes precisely after becoming honest, after affliction, after atonement. Sukkot is no shallow cheerfulness; it is the joy of people who know they live by grace.

A booth that tells a story

For Sukkot one is to take the fruit of goodly trees, palm branches, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook. The feast is bodily: you smell leaves, you feel branches, you sit outside, you eat, you dwell differently for a time. That fits how God teaches Israel — not only with abstract ideas but with forms, acts, times, meals, rest days, feasts; for we are not floating spirits, we remember with our bodies. And then the question can arise: why do we do this? The answer stands right there: “that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of Egypt.” The feast makes remembrance liveable.

The sukkah is really a story you can sit down inside. The walls say: you were travellers. The roof says: you were vulnerable. The meal says: yet God gave food. The shade says: yet He kept you. And the stars you can see through the branches say: your safety never came only from the material above your head. The old teachers even disputed what those desert booths were: real, fragile structures made by human hands, or the clouds of God’s glory that covered the people. And the beautiful thing is that the sukkah holds both — it is at once my frail structure and His shade over me. That is confronting, for we like to build security, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself: a solid house is a blessing, saving can be wise, maintaining a roof is sensible. But a blessing becomes dangerous when it takes the Giver’s place; then we begin to trust what we have built as though it could carry us. Sukkot pulls us out of that for a few days — not to call houses bad, but to let houses be houses again, and God be God again.

A witness without words

When I thought about this, what came to mind was the first time we celebrated the feast. We lived then on the Rivierdijk in Hardinxveld, by the Merwede, and we built the booth beside our house. The result was that everyone who drove past could see it standing there. We were enthusiastic and a good deal younger than now; we even slept in that booth with our oldest children, Mattanja and Jochanan — sleeping bags, and if it rained a little we just stayed lying there. Very special, real family time.

But a few houses down lived a neighbour who had great trouble with it. At one point she stood at the top of the dike shouting at us: “Listen, this is terrible what you are doing, for by this you are denying your upbringing and everything you were taught.” I tried to respond, but she was not at all open to talk about it or to listen; not much of a conversation came of it. I would so gladly have told her that this was in fact exactly what my upbringing had taught me — to search the Bible, God’s Word, and to go on the way with God. But I do not think she wanted to hear it.

And the striking thing is: the conversation was over — and yet we built that booth. That is where the joy in my heart comes from: when I can build that booth, no words are needed any more, and yet something is built. That booth is a witness. A silent witness, but a witness. Sometimes that is perhaps the best way: to be silent, and yet to testify by being obedient to what God asks. For in the end our voice need no longer sound — it sounded, perhaps, when we had to blow the trumpet, or when we passed on the call: come and go with us. But at some point our voice stops; and that trumpet-sound of God’s calling always sounds. The Father stands watching until His child returns, and all people are welcome to return. That is what the booth shows: that God wants to dwell with us — in our fragile lives, which we have tried to build up but which are far from perfect.

The wilderness was no mistake

When Israel later looks back on the wilderness, it could easily think: that was the period before real life began — Egypt past, the land not yet reached, so those years in between were only a tiresome transition. But the Torah does not allow that; God says instead: remember that time. For in the wilderness something became visible that a solid house easily hides: dependence. Every day manna, water where there was none, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, clothing that lasted, God’s presence in the midst. The wilderness was not only a place of lack; it was also a place where Israel had to learn who truly cared for them. Perhaps there are periods in our lives too of which we think: I never want to go back there — and that can be understandable. But sometimes precisely there something was learned that easily gets lost in times of abundance. Not that hardship is good in itself; but dependence can teach us what control never can: to receive.

From Yom Kippur to Sukkot

That makes the order of the feasts even more meaningful. On Yom Kippur we stood before God unable to hide anything; sin was confessed, atonement was central, the person could not cleanse himself. And now, a few days later, that same person enters a booth. As though God says: now that you have learned you cannot carry away your own guilt, learn again that you cannot fully carry your own life either. Grace goes further than forgiveness; grace teaches us to live as receivers. We receive breath, food, rain, children, time, strength, community, forgiveness — and finally God Himself.

You shall rejoice

But Sukkot is not gloomy — on the contrary, God commands joy. That is remarkable. We often think joy arises by itself when circumstances are good enough. But in the Torah joy too is practised: remember, gather, eat, celebrate, rejoice before God’s face. That does not mean sorrow is forbidden; it does mean we should not practise only our pain. A person can also become practised in disappointment, in distrust, in constantly seeing what is missing. Sukkot teaches Israel to look again at what has been given: the harvest is in, there is food, God has carried, the people live — and so: rejoice. Not because everything is perfect, but because God is faithful. Even while the leaves of the booth wither and fall through the week, we may be glad for what God has given in this feast. Precisely in that transience joy learns to fix itself on the Giver and not on the gift.

The harvest is in

Sukkot is celebrated when the produce of threshing floor and winepress is gathered; it is a harvest feast, and that gives yet a deeper layer. All year the farmer has worked — ploughed, sown, waited, perhaps irrigated, harvested. But whoever truly lives by farming knows that not everything can be made. A person can sow, but he cannot produce the life in the seed; he can tend, but he cannot command the rain; he can harvest, but he cannot undo a failed summer in retrospect. The harvest is therefore at once the result of labour and a received gift. And that is perhaps a healthy description of our whole life: we may work, take responsibility, build, plan — but fruit in the end remains gift.

Zechariah sees the King come

Then the haftarah changes the perspective. Zechariah 14 looks ahead to a day of great distress around Jerusalem; it does not begin romantically. There is war, the city is attacked, the nations gather, the day of the LORD is described with images of judgment and intervention. And then it says: “Then the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with You.” God intervenes; His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives. And at last one great declaration sounds: “The LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.” There the perspective of Sukkot suddenly grows much larger: it is no longer only about Israel remembering its wilderness journey, but about the kingship of God over the earth.

Living waters and the nations

Zechariah then says that on that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem: half to the eastern, half to the western sea, in summer and winter, water that keeps flowing. That too fits Sukkot, a feast of harvest in which rain and God’s provision lie so close. And Zechariah sees not merely enough water for one field or one people; he sees water going out, spreading life — the place where God is King becomes a source. We see that pattern often: what God gives does not stay locked up. Abraham is blessed to be a blessing; Jerusalem does not become a bunker in which God is shut up, but a place from which blessing goes out.

And then something happens that is tied directly to Sukkot. Zechariah says that the remaining nations that had come up against Jerusalem shall come year after year “to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” Sukkot is not made smaller here, but larger: the nations come — not to replace Israel or to say Jerusalem no longer matters, but precisely to the King, to worship Him. Zechariah even says that when a people does not come to worship and keep Sukkot, there will be no rain. That sounds severe, but within the image it fits: whoever refuses to acknowledge the Source cannot at the same time act as though the gift exists apart from the Giver. Rain is no autonomous possession, harvest no right we produce of ourselves. Zechariah confronts exactly the illusion Sukkot breaks each year: that we can receive life without the Life-giver.

Holy down to the cooking pots

The end of Zechariah 14 is almost surprisingly everyday. On the bells of the horses shall be written: “HOLINESS TO THE LORD,” and the cooking pots in Jerusalem shall be holy. That is a beautiful ending. We easily make a division between the holy and the ordinary: the temple is holy, but the kitchen? Prayer is holy, but cooking the food? The assembly is holy, but my work? Zechariah sees a future in which God’s holiness pervades everything — even the ordinary utensil is dedicated to Him. And that is where the feasts want finally to form us: not a few holy days in an otherwise autonomous life, but holy days that teach us that all of life is God’s.

And then Luke 2

Then we come to Luke 2 — and here I want first to say something carefully. Luke does not tell us that Yeshua was born during Sukkot. There are calculations and traditions that link His birth to the autumn feasts, but Luke gives no date by which we can establish that with certainty; so I do not use this text as proof of a birth date. But as a confessional horizon the connection is beautiful. For what is Sukkot about? God who carries His people, who dwells among His people; vulnerability, temporary lodging, joy, kingship. And then we read of Joseph and Mary who are on the way — not in their own house, not in their familiar surroundings, travelling. And there Yeshua is born.

No room

Luke says that Mary brought forth her firstborn Son, wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. The beginning of the Messiah is told remarkably small: no palace, no throne room, no house to display His dignity — a child, swaddling clothes, a manger, vulnerability. The King does not come in the form of which people say: now we must surely be impressed. He comes so that He must be received. That is a very different movement than human power. Power often says: look what I own, look what I can compel, look how solid my walls are. But God shows His Messiah as a child — you cannot be intimidated by that, you can only receive Him.

Shepherds in the field

And who hear the news first? Shepherds. People outside, with their flocks, at night. And suddenly the glory of the LORD appears. That contrast is beautiful: a very ordinary night, a field, sheep, working people — and then glory, as though the boundary between heaven and earth suddenly grows thin. The angel says: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Great joy — that word fits Sukkot, the feast of joy. And why that joy? “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” The joy does not hang in the air; it has a Source, a Person. Then a multitude of the heavenly host appears: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” Here too we must not read over it too quickly. Zechariah 14 began with war and ended with the kingship of God; Luke 2 begins in the middle of the Roman world, where Caesar Augustus makes his power felt as everyone must be registered. A Caesar gives command, people travel — and somewhere in Bethlehem a Child is meanwhile born. Who is truly King? Rome has palaces, armies, taxes, roads; Yeshua has a manger. But heaven already knows what earth still has to learn: “Christ the Lord.”

The Word became flesh

The shepherds hear it and do not say: interesting, let us think about it later. They go, in haste, find Mary, Joseph and the Child, and afterward they tell it. Hearing leads to moving — we saw that earlier in Deuteronomy already: the Word comes near, in mouth and heart, and finally in hands and feet. Mary does something else: she keeps all these words and ponders them in her heart. The shepherds go to speak, Mary keeps — and both are needed. There are moments to testify, and moments to carry something longer in the heart; sometimes a word must first dwell in us for a time before we understand what it does to us. And there, for me, lies the deepest connection. John will later say it more sharply: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The verb he uses there evokes the thought of dwelling, of tabernacling. I do not want to make an etymological trick of it, as though John were encoding a secret festival calendar; but the image is unmistakable: God’s Word does not stay behind glass, not only on tablets of stone, not only in a book — in Yeshua God’s nearness becomes visible in a human life. He dwells among people.

What is your fixed house?

Perhaps Sukkot then becomes very personal. What is my real house? Not the address where I am registered, but that in which I seek my security. Where do I withdraw when I am afraid? My money? My knowledge? My being right? My reputation? My family? My health? My religious conviction? Even good things can become walls behind which we try to keep ourselves safe. Sukkot does not say all those things are worthless; it asks something deeper: can you also come out? Can you sit in the booth, look up through the branches, and say: Lord, in the end it is not this that carries me — You carry me.

That asks for an opened hand: not the fist that holds on to what it has built, but the open hand that receives what is given. And that is exactly what the sukkah teaches you for a week. You set it up, beautiful and green, you enjoy it — and through the week the leaves wither, they fall, and yet the joy remains, because it did not hang on the branches but on the Giver. So Sukkot stands between the Day of Atonement and the winter as a song of trust: you are reconciled, you have become honest, and now you may learn to dwell as one who is carried. The God who carried your guilt away wants to carry your life too. He brought Israel through the wilderness, He covered them with His shade, He truly enters our world in the Messiah — and He wants, right through all that is frail and fleeting, to dwell with us. So come out of your fixed house. Sit down under His shade. And rejoice — for it is not what you built that carries you, but He.