THE TENTH FESTIVAL
[2.204] [cap.2.33] The last of all the annual festivals is that which is called the feast of tabernacles, which is fixed for the season of the autumnal equinox. And by this festival the lawgiver teaches two lessons, both that it is necessary to honour equality, the first principle and beginning of justice, the principle akin to unshadowed light; and that it is becoming also, after witnessing the perfection of all the fruits of the year, to give thanks to that Being who has made them perfect.
[2.205] For the autumn (μετόπωρον), as its very name shows is the season which comes after (μετά) the fruits of the year (τὴν ὀπώραν) are now gathered into the granaries, on account of the providence of nature which loves the living creatures upon the earth.
[2.206] And, indeed, the people are commanded to pass the whole period of the feast under tents, either because there is no longer any necessity for remaining in the open air labouring at the cultivation of the land, since there is nothing left in the land, but all.... is stored up in the barns, on account of the injuries which otherwise might be likely to visit it from the burning of the sun or the violence of the rains.
[2.207] It is also intended as a commemoration of the long journeying of their ancestors, while making which through the desert they lodged in numerous tents for many years, while stopping at each halting place.
[2.208] And it is proper in the time of riches to remember one’s poverty, and in an hour of glory to recollect the days of one’s disgrace, and at a season of peace to think upon the dangers that are past.
[2.210] Again, the beginning of this festival is appointed for the fifteenth day of the month, on account of the reason which has already been mentioned respecting the spring season, also that the world may be full, not by day only but also by night, of the most beautiful light, the sun and moon on their rising opposite to one another with uninterrupted light, without any darkness interposing itself between so as to divide them.
[2.211] And after the festival has lasted seven days, he adds an eighth as a seal, calling it a kind of crowning feast, not only as it would seem to this festival, but also to all the feasts of the year which we have enumerated; for it is the last feast of the year, and is a very stable and holy sort of conclusion, befitting men who have now received all the produce from the land, and who are no longer in perplexity and apprehension respecting any barrenness or scarcity.
[2.214] I have spoken in this way about the sacred week and the sacred number seven at more than usual length, wishing to show that all the feasts of the year are, as it were, the offspring of the number seven, which stands in the relation of a mother. [125]... Follies and joys; and because in such assemblies and in a cheerful course of life there are thus established seasons of delight unconnected with any sorrow or depression supporting both the body and the soul; the one by the pleasure and the other by the opportunities for philosophical study which they afford. [126]