"Celebrate this as a festival to the LORD for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month.Live in booths for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in booths so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the LORD your God."

~ Leviticus 23:41-43 ~

The Feast of Tabernacles begins five days after Yom Kippur on the fifteenth of Tishri (September or October), and lasts for eight days. It is a huge change from one of the most solemn holidays in our year to one of the most joyous.

It is the Harvest Festival of Joy!

The Court of the Women
Within this area, all Jews, male and female, were permitted. Even a ritually unclean Cohen could enter to perform various housekeeping duties. There was also a place for lepers (considered ritually unclean), as well as a ritual barbershop for Nazirites. In this, the largest of the temple courts, there could be seen constant dancing, singing and music.

The Court of the Israelites
This area was exclusively for Jewish men to enter. The Jewish men could see the animal sacrifices made by the high priest, in the court of the priests. The high priest was leader of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish government.

The Court of the Priests
The court of the priests was where the sacrificed animals, but only domestic animals could be sacrificed. Also doves and pigeons were sacrificed. The animals had to be younger than one years of age. Lambs were sacrificed as well, that is why Christians today now call Yeshua the Lamb of God, because he was sacrificed.

The Holy Temple
Between the entrance of the building and the curtain veiling the Holy of Holies were the famous vessels of the temple: the menorah, the incense-burning altar, and various other implements, some of which were purified with blood.

On the other side of the curtain, within the holy of holies, the chamber was empty; the Ark of the Covenant had disappeared long before.

The Great Illumination took place in the court of the women: 4 golden candelabra, each with 4 golden bowls, are filled with oil.

So brilliant was the light that there was not a court in Jerusalem that was not lit up by it. This reminded them of God's leading in the wilderness with the pillar of fire. It also reminded them of the Messianic promises for the future when the light of Yahovah would arise upon the land (Isaiah 60:1, 19, 20).

The Talmud (Jerusalem Talmud Sukkot 55 b; Sukkot 53 a) states that on every night of the festive week, 'the Court of the Women' was brilliantly illuminated, and the night spent in joyous celebration.

This 'joy of the feast' remembered the hope of the great harvest when the gentile world would see the light of God – compare with Isaiah 49:6,

"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."

Even the windows in the Court of Women were narrow on the inside and wide on the outside (usually the other way round) so as to emphasise that the light of God was to go from inside to outside – the Court of the gentiles – and beyond! And so all this also pointed to 'the days of the Messiah.'

It was on this last day, the great day, when Yeshua stood and cried:

"If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water" (John 7:37-38).

Near the Treasury (cf. Jn. 8:20) in the colonnade around 'the Court of the Women,' in which the receptacles for charitable contributions - the so-called Shopharoth, or 'trumpets' - were placed. The Court of the Women was the common meeting-place of Jewish worshippers

This location was also likely to have prompted Yeshua's initial statement "I Am the light of the world" (v 12) in allusion to one of the great ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles.