This was the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the final and greatest of Israel’s annual feasts (Leviticus 23:33–42; Numbers 29:12–39; Deuteronomy 16:13–15). This feast was a time for remembering the great deeds of God in the past, especially during Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Everyone was required to live for seven days in temporary shelters made from tree branches. This was to relive the wilderness experience.1 And it was to remember that even the Promised Land was not their permanent home, but was a type of their heavenly home (see Hebrews 11:14).2 They were pilgrims, on their way to something greater. So in Haggai’s day, the people were to leave their panelled homes and live in makeshift booths for seven days in Jerusalem. Haggai could then speak the word of the Lord for all the people to hear—Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the nation at large.
1 In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet,