Nehemiah 8:15-17

The Voice

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.