Nehemiah 8:13-18

The Voice

¹³ The next day, the heads of every family, along with the priests and the Levites, regathered around Ezra the scribe to further study God’s law. ¹⁴ As they studied the law, they discovered that through Moses, the Eternal had commanded Israel to live in temporary shelters during the Feast of Booths of the seventh month. ¹⁵ So they issued a proclamation, and it went out to everyone in Jerusalem and in every town that people should go into the hills to gather branches from olive trees, wild olive trees, myrtle trees, palm trees—any kind of leafy tree they could find. With these branches they were told to build temporary shelters to house them during the festival, as God’s law declared. ¹⁶ So the people went out and gathered branches. They built temporary shelters anywhere they could—on the roofs of their houses, in their courtyards, in the temple courts, in the squares by the water gate and the gate of Ephraim. ¹⁷ Everyone who had returned from exile—all 42,360 people—made the temporary shelters and lived in them. From the time of Joshua (Nun’s son) until that very day, no one in Israel had observed the festival in this way, remembering those from the Egyptian exile too. So they celebrated, and their joy was great. ¹⁸ Throughout everything, Ezra continued to read from the book of God’s law, day by day. The celebration of the feast continued for seven days. On the eighth day, in keeping with the directions given, Israel gathered for a solemn assembly.