When Jesus lived on earth during His ministry 2,000 years ago, He revealed much about Himself at the Festival of Sukkot, otherwise known as The Feast of Tabernacles.   One instance of this is in John 7:37-38 which notes that Jesus identified Himself as being all-satisfying water.  I had read this verse many times, but until this week I had no idea of the significance of this statement being given at the last day of The Festival of Booths (חַג סֻכֹּ֔ת); however, this giving of that statement at that moment actually helps to explain its meaning.

To understand this moment in John 7, it is essential to understand the Festival of Booths, of Hag-Sukkoth as the Jews call it.  Firstly, the Israelites were commanded to observe it by Moses in Leviticus 23:39-43.  They were told to make temporary box-shaped booths, like tents, to help them remember how God lead them out of Egypt through the wilderness and provided for them in the Book of Numbers.  These booths were to be lived in for seven days and were to be decorated with fronds of trees and fruit.  Today, Jews do this with myrtle branches, palm trees, willow branches, and citrus fruits.  When the walls of Jerusalem were re-built by the prophet Nehemiah; in 8:13-18, he commanded the Jews returning from exile to re-institute the Feast of Booths after having failed to do so since the time of Joshua; the only amendment that Nehemiah made was that the Jews were  to use olive branches instead of willows and no fruit was required.  Tellingly, Nehemiah commanded that the festival be celebrated specifically near the Water Gate at the Temple (v. 16), a practice that bore much significance up until the coming of Christ.  In Nehemiah’s day, the festival brought with it ‘exceedingly great gladness’ (v. 17).

Secondly, in time, Sukkot was connected not only with the wilderness experience in general, but with God’s miraculous provision of water throughout that time.  In a ceremony named Simchat Beit Ha-Shoevah, or the Joyful Drawing of Water, the high priest would go down to the pool of Siloam and fill a pitcher with water.  He would then carry the pitcher up the steep pathway to peak of the hill and enter the Temple, where he would  pour the water over the altar after the morning sacrifice had been offered.  This, according to rabbinic tradition, was meant to fulfil Isaiah 12:3-6: Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.  And in that day you will say, “Give thanks to Yahweh, call on His name.  Make known His deeds among the peoples; make them remember that His name is exalted”.   Praise Yahweh in song, for He has done majestic things; let this be known throughout the earth.  Cry aloud and shout for joy, inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel (LSB).  This water-pouring libation was the peak moment of the end of the 7-day festival and without it, the ceremony was seen as unfulfilled and, pun intended, dry.  (You can read more about it in detail at this Jewish website, Chabad).  Sukkot is so highly revered and full of joy in its celebration that the Jewish Talmud even says that, “One who never saw the Water-Drawing Celebration has never seen joy in his life”.

It is not without irony that Jesus chose this very moment to disclose Himself as life-giving water.  Not only that, but in choosing the most joyous moment of the most joyous celebration of Israel’s calendar year, He announced Himself as joy itself and the spring of salvation from Isaiah 12; John notes this in 7:37a, that Jesus did this “On the last day of the feast, the great day”.  Once the moment had arrived, “Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”  At the moment these words were uttered, the high priest of Jesus’ day, Caiaphas (who eventually was to have Him crucified for the sins of Israel) would have just poured the water on the Temple altar.  The significance of this would be eventually underscored by the fact that Jesus, by dying on the cross, would fulfil the Old Testament sacrifices, the proverbial Lamb of God that would be sacrificed on a Roman ‘altar’, so to speak.  Jesus is also the high priest (Hebrews 4:14-16) who pours the water, water which really satisfies.  Yet this water comes not from a pool but from Himself.  He gives this water to us so that we can pass it onto others in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy (c.f. Ezekiel 47).

Of all the Gospel writers, John uses the motif of water in connection with Jesus more than any of the others.  Why?  Because Jesus gives refreshment for weary souls.  He does not give physical water, per se, but something so much more enduring: life-giving water of a spiritual nature.  Are you dried out by the mundane banality of life?  Jesus will satisfy.  Are you thirsty from striving for approval but lacking it?  Let Jesus satiate your parched soul.  Have you endured disappointment, loss, grief, and deprivation for a long time and are on the brink of giving up?  I have been for so, so long.  Then let us come to Jesus for satisfaction.  And let us not drink just once or twice; let us not take infant’s sips.  Let us drink in deeply the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ day by day, moment by moment.  He not only will quench our thirsts, but be our deepest joy.  And when He does that, we can be a blessing to others, to bring them to the same life-giving waters.

God bless, Nahum.

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For more information on how to read the Bible for devotional purposes you can read here about my Bible reading method named FLAGON.