Nehemiah 8:12–18

¹²And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.^*

The Festival of Booths Celebrated

¹³On the second day the heads of ancestral houses of all the people, with the priests and the Levites, came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the law. ¹⁴And they found it written in the law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the Israelites should live in booths^e during the festival of the seventh month^{* 15}and that they should publish and proclaim in all their towns and in Jerusalem as follows, “Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths,^f as it is written.”^{* 16}So the people went out and brought them and made booths^g for themselves, each on the roofs of their houses, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim.^{* 17}And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths^h and lived in them, for from the days of Jeshua son of Nun to that day the Israelites had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing.^{* 18}And day by day, from the first day to the last day, Ezraⁱ read from the book of the law of God. They kept the festival seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the ordinance.^*