Booth

Booth designates a temporary shelter constructed from the branches, leaves, and boughs of trees. The Hebrew sukkah (plural sukkoth) appears in Jacob's construction of shelters for his cattle at the place thereafter named Succoth (Gen. 33:17), and in the Feast of Booths (Sukkot), during which Israel was commanded to dwell in booths for seven days each autumn to commemorate the wilderness wandering (Lev. 23:42–43). The feast was one of the three great pilgrimage festivals of the Israelite calendar, associated with the ingathering of the harvest at the end of the agricultural year.

Booths also appear in military contexts as field shelters (2 Sam. 11:11; 1 Kings 20:12, 16) and in the agricultural setting of watchmen's huts in vineyards and fields (Isa. 1:8; Job 27:18). The fragility and impermanence of the sukkah gave it theological resonance as a reminder of Israel's dependence on God during the wilderness years. Zechariah 14:16–19 envisions the nations streaming to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Booths in the age to come, giving the feast eschatological dimensions.