The Origins of Sukkot

In collaboration with Rabbi David D. Steinberg

That this list predates the “Ritual Decalogue” list in Exod 34, and that the latter is a revision of this list, was demonstrated definitively by Shimon Gesundheit, in his essay “The Festival Calendars in Exod 23:14-19 and 34:18-26,” which appears as the first chapter of his book. See, Shimon Gesundheit, Three Times a Year (FAT 82; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 12-43.

As noted by Gesundheit, the revision of this text in the Ritual Decalogue changes the language:

^{שמות לד:כב} וְחַג הָאָסִיף תְּקוּפַת הַשָּׁנָה.

^{Exod 34:22} …And the Feast of Gathering at the turn of the year.

This was likely meant to obscure the New Year aspect of the holiday, due to the dominance of the spring calendar in Judah.

Alternatively, it may be that Asif was celebrated at what was otherwise known as the end of the year.

The Priestly source in Numbers does offer an exact date for this holiday, as well as describing it as lasting seven days, but gives the holiday no name at all, in keeping with its treatment of all the holidays in the seventh month.

^{במדבר כט:יב} וּבַחֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר יוֹם לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִקְרָא קֹדֶשׁ יִהְיֶה לָכֶם כָּל מְלֶאכֶת עֲבֹדָה לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ וְחַגֹּתֶם חַג לַיהוָה שִׁבְעַת יָמִים.

^{Num 29:12} On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, you shall observe a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations. — Seven days you shall observe a festival of YHWH.

The latest festival calendar, the Holiness Legislation in Leviticus, which was familiar with the previous sources, combines all these elements:

^{ויקרא כג:לד} …בַּחֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר יוֹם לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי הַזֶּה חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת שִׁבְעַת יָמִים לַיהֹוָה.

^{Lev 23:34} … On the fifteenth day of this seventh month there shall be the Feast of Booths to YHWH, seven days.

Both the Priestly and Holiness sources date the holiday to the 15^th—i.e., the full moon—of the seventh month, following the Nissan calendar dominant in Judah before and certainly after the exilic period, thus neutralizing the holiday’s New Year connotations.

For more on this point, see Marc Z. Brettler, “The Hakhel Ceremony,” TheTorah.com(2014).

 See, 2 Sam 16:1; Isa 19:9, 28:4; Jer 40:10, 12; Mic 7:1; Prov 10:5. “Summer fruit” is a better translation than merely “summer,” though both are accurate, since the calendar is about harvest activities not seasons per se. I thank Uzi Weingarten for calling my attention to this point. 

Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World 10; Atlanta: SBL, 2002), 63-65.

This huge list of daily sacrifices is reminiscent of the list of Sukkot sacrifices in Num 29:13-38.

Pardee further notes (ad loc.) the difference in the date:

It differs from the biblical version, however, in occurring on the first day of the month… rather than the fifteenth day…

Perhaps this first of the month celebration is related to the Jewish Rosh Hashanah, which, though never mentioned in the Bible as such, appears in suppressed form in P and H as “the Festival of the First of the Seventh Month.”

See, Johannes C. De Moor, New Year with Canaanites and Israelites (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1972) 22. Following De Moor’s lead, Jan Wagenaar argues forcefully for this connection as well, and sums up the evidence nicely:

Like the New Year festival in Ugarit, Sukkot falls at the beginning of a new year. Sukkot may, therefore, have been to all intents and purposes the ancient Israelite new year festival. A comparison between Sukkot and the Ugaritic New Year festival may also contribute to the clarification of the designation חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת, ‘the festival of huts’ used in Deut 16:13, 16. The name has traditionally been taken to refer to the ‘huts’ that were erected in the vineyards and orchards in the course of the harvest of the grapes and the summer fruit. The huts in the far-off vineyards and orchards were erected in order to extend the working hours during daylight in the time of the harvest and facilitate guarding the crops. De Moor has, however, drawn attention to the custom of constructing two rows of huts on the roof of the temple as temporary dwellings for the images of the gods in the course of the Ugaritic New Year festival. The ‘festival of huts’ mentioned in Deuteronomy 16:13 may likewise have originally had in mind huts erected in the temple precinct of Jerusalem in the days of the new year festival. The name חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת may as such confirm the suggestion that the ‘festival of huts’ was originally a New Year festival.

Jan A. Waganaar, Origin and Transformation of the Ancient Israelite Festival Calendar(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), 23. Another scholar of Ugaritic, Gregorio del Olme Lette, has offered a similar explanation for the origin of the Israelite sukkah, and traces its development from the Canaanite practice to the uniquely Israelite/Judahite practice into which it developed. See, Gregorio del Olme Lette,”Sûkkot: From Ugarit to the Talmud – The Survival of a Ritual ‘in the Terrace,'”Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos: Sección Hebreo 53 (2004): 249-269 [Spanish].

For some discussion of this, see Mark Smith, “Recent Study of Israelite Religion in Light of the Ugaritic Texts,” in Ugarit at Seventy-Five (ed., K. Lawson Younger; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 1-26.

For example, Ezekiel makes reference to the great non-Israelite sage Danel (Ezek 14:14, 20, 28:3), known only from the Ugaritic epic of Akhat. How does Ezekiel, an exilic prophet living in Babylon know of a Ugaritic story buried in a city destroyed almost a millennium before his time? It seems necessary to posit that this story survived orally or in lost writings (or both) throughout the Levant during this long period. See discussion in, Walther Zimmerli,Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis; Fortress Press, 1979), 314-315.

Such a practice likely predates Deuteronomy, and may even have been practiced in Canaanite or (other) Israelite temples. This suggested connection between the Israelite practice and the Ugaritic practice contrasts with the standard explanation for these huts as reflecting the practice of farmers during gathering season to build temporary dwellings near their crops. See esp. Isa 1:8. The Torah, of course, gives an entirely different reason for this practice, namely to remind the Israelites that God gave them sukkot to dwell in during the wilderness period:

^{ויקרא כג:מג} לְמַעַן יֵדְעוּ דֹרֹתֵיכֶם כִּי בַסֻּכּוֹת הוֹשַׁבְתִּי אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּהוֹצִיאִי אוֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם אֲנִי יְ-הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.

^{Lev 23:43} In order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I YHWH your God.

This, however, is a late attempt to connect an agricultural holiday to an Israelite foundational myth. See discussion in David Frankel, “Integrating the Exodus Story into the Festivals,”TheTorah.com (2015). 

See discussion in “The First Sukkah,” TheTorah.com (2013). See also, Israel Knohl,Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 39, n. 88. Another marker that the entire section of vv. 39-44 is a gloss, or a series of glosses, is its beginning with the word אך (“mark”), which is virtually always a sign of redaction. See discussion in, Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, Oxford 1988, 184-185, 197-199; David Frankel, The Murmuring Stories of the Priestly School (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 258-260; Emanuel Tov, “Glosses, Interpolations, and Other Types of Scribal Additions in the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” in Language, Theology, and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (ed. S.E. Balentine & J. Barton; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 40-66 [Revised version: The Greek and Hebrew Bible (1999), 53-74]. 

 For more on this Torah reading, see Aaron Demsky, “Historical Hakhel Ceremonies and the Origin of Public Torah Reading,” TheTorah.com (2017); Jacob L. Wright, “The Origins of Torah Study,” TheTorah.com (2015). 

As Liz Fried notes, what Nehemiah quotes is not exactly what Leviticus says, implying that the text of this gloss was not yet fixed. See Lisbeth Fried, “Sukkot in Ezra and Nehemiah and the Date of the Torah,” TheTorah.com (2015). For an alternative view, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27 (Anchor Bible; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 2063-2067.

This is also the reading of the Karaites and the Samaritans. See Shawn Lichaa, “Sukkot’s Unshaken Four Species,” TheTorah.com (2016); Benyamim Tsedaka, “A Fruity-Sukkah Made from the Four Species,” TheTorah.com (2014). Milgrom argues that this is a misunderstanding on Ezra’s part, and not the meaning of the text in Leviticus; Milgrom,Leviticus 23-27, 2050.

Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, 2050. See also Liz Fried’s discussion in her above-referenced essay.