Sukkot: The Water of Life

By Rev. Philip Bottomley

The Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot is the seventh and final celebration of the annual “Feasts of the LORD” that he instructed his people to observe through Moses (Lev 23). Sukkot is a weeklong festival, and as in the other two pilgrim festivals (Passover and Pentecost), every adult male in Israel was commanded to come up to Jerusalem to celebrate it. Sukkot is a harvest festival (like Passover and Pentecost) that celebrates the ingathering of the fruit. Yet, it has much more meaning than just that. Indeed, it is sometimes referred to simply as “the Feast”!  

The eighth and final day of the feast is called the "Great Day” or the “Great Hosannah.” It is a day to seal up the books of life and death that were opened on Rosh Hashanah , to pray for rain to produce the harvests in the next year, and developing from all that, it is a time of intense prayer for the coming of Messiah.

A ceremony called the “Water Drawing,” based on the scriptures quoted above, had come into existence by Jesus’ time. On the Great Day, while prayers for rain and

for the Messiah were being intoned, a young priest would go to the pool of Siloam, draw a pitcher of water, and carry it in joyful procession to the altar of burnt offering in the Temple, where, after processing around the altar seven times, he would pour out the water as a libation to the LORD. A great shout of “Hosannah to the Son of David!” would go forth from the throng of worshippers.

My brothers and sisters, if you have found Yeshua HaMashiach to be the source of inexhaustible “living water,” are you sharing this “Good News” with those around you?

^{Rev. Philip Bottomley is the director of Ministry Partnerships. Contact him to schedule a Jewish roots teaching for your church or small group: Philip.Bottomley@cmj-usa.org .}