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The feast of the seventh month

13 On the second day of the seventh month, the leaders of families met together. They met with the priests, the Levites and with Ezra. They wanted to study the message of God's Law. 14 They discovered what the Lord had commanded about a certain feast. The Lord had told Moses that the Israelites should live in huts during this feast. They should do that in the seventh month of each year.[a]

15 They discovered that they must send a message to everyone in Jerusalem and all Judah's cities. They must tell people, ‘Go into the hill country. Bring back branches from olive trees, wild olive trees, myrtle trees, palm trees and other trees with lots of leaves. Use these branches to build huts to live in. That is what God's Law teaches.’

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Footnotes

  1. 8:14 God brought the Israelites out of Egypt in the seventh month. So they must remember this with a special feast. We read about this in Leviticus 23:33-43.

13 On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and the Levites, gathered around Ezra the teacher to give attention to the words of the Law. 14 They found written in the Law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in temporary shelters(A) during the festival of the seventh month 15 and that they should proclaim this word and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem: “Go out into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and wild olive trees, and from myrtles, palms and shade trees, to make temporary shelters”—as it is written.[a]

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Footnotes

  1. Nehemiah 8:15 See Lev. 23:37-40.