26/09/2021
THE USES OF THE SUCCAH (Booth)
The succah was constructed from trees and bushes whose branches were joined together to form a protective roof against the heat of the sun. Its uses during the biblical period were numerous, but its function was always that of a temporary structure. The booths were the homes of the desert nomads, as in Leviticus:
I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. (Leviticus 23:43)
They served as shelters for livestock in the pastures, as we find in the narrative of Jacob who journeyed to Succoth in Genesis:
…and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle. (Genesis 33:17)
They were also used as living quarters for soldiers in the battlefield, as Uriah the Hittite explains to David during the siege of Rabbath-ammon in II Samuel 11:11:
The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents [succoth]; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open fields.…(II Samuel 11:11)
and in the siege of Samaria by King Ben-hadad of Aram in I Kings (I Kgs 20:12, 20:16). The booths were also the lairs of wild animals in the forest, as in Psalm 10:
He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den [succah].… (Psalms 10:9)
or in Job:
Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? or fill the appetite of the young lions,
When they crouch in their dens, and abide in the covert [succah] to lie in wait? (Job 38:39–40)
Finally, they were used by man, as is narrated of Jonah:
…and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth [succah], and sat under it in the shadow.… (Jonah 4:5)
while the most important use of the succah was during the Feast of Tabernacles, or Succoth, when the Israelites dwelt in it for seven days. This festival is one of the three important agricultural feasts of the Jewish people.