Feast of Tabernacles Sukkot 2011 – Leviticus 23:40 The Way We Did It part 1

23:40 and on the first day ye shall take goodly fruit of trees, and branches of palm trees, and thick boughs of trees, and willows, and branches of osiers from the brook, to rejoice before the Lord your God seven days in the year.

We went to the “hill country” of our family land to gather these things.

For the goodly fruit of the trees, we chose Persimmons.  We picked about a dozen and chose one each of the choice fruits for each of us.  This is obviously a fitting fulfillment of “goodly fruit of trees”.   We were thinking along the lines of rejoicing for the fruit Yahweh has provided from the land.   We were also thinking that we are the fruit of the seed (zerah) of the Word.

For the branches of palms we chose leaves of Polonia.  We did this after looking at the primitive root of the words.

We were thinking these rather large leaves represent the power and goodness of the open hand of Yahweh.  They were the closest thing to a large palm frond we could come up with.

For the thick bough of trees we again looked to the primitive root of the words.

We went for the densest wood on the property.  After a little research on native hardwoods, we chose Pignut Hickory with a specific gravity of .83.  This is more dense than Dogwood, all of the oaks, and Persimmon.  The only native hardwood that would best fit that is the Osage Orange and we do not have those anywhere that could be found.

We were thinking the strength of the wood represents the strength of Yahweh, his Word and the strength of this household, spiritual Israel.  Israel is strong for his (YHWH’s) own name’s sake.

For the willows of the brook, we simply chose willows.  We came down out of the hills and went to the pond.  These represent a tree planted by rivers of living water.  Think Psalm 1.

We took all these things.  We blew two shofars.  We all rejoiced holding these four items before Yahweh our Elohim while dancing to Days of Elijah by Paul Wilbur.  It was fantastic!