John 7:2

2. Jews Note on John 1:19.

Feast of tabernacles This was one of the three great annual feasts which every Jew was required to attend at Jerusalem. It took place early in October, and was a celebration of the sojourn of Israel in the wilderness. The wilderness residence was imitated by the building of tabernacles, that is, booths or wig-wams made of autumnal bushes and boughs, so that the vacant grounds were occupied with a sudden rural city, in which the people held their temporary residence. It was held during seven days, yet an eighth was added, which finally became the great day of the feast, (John 7:37.) Within the temple grounds there was no well or water spring; and each morning, after the early sacrifice, a priest went with a large golden pitcher and drew water from the fount of Siloam, at the side of the temple mount, and thence returned in joyous procession to the grand altar, behind which he poured the water forth to descend to the subterranean watercourses beneath. This ceremony at once commemorated the miraculous furnishing of water to famishing Israel, and prefigured the higher impartation of the Holy Spirit to Israel’s thirsting nation. So festal was this rite that the rabbins say that he who has not seen this Joy of the waters knows not what rejoicing is. In process of time, and, doubtless, in our Saviour’s day, this feast had degenerated into profane revelry; so disgracefully, indeed, that a pagan writer, Plutarch, honestly records that it was a feast of Bacchus! Fully to understand the transactions and discourses at this visit to the metropolis, the whole passage as far as John 10:21, with its brief appendix of the Feast of Dedication, to John 10:40, should be read.