HAFTARA FOR THE FIRST DAY OF SUKKOT Zechariah was one of the last of the prophets. He began his prophetic career around the year 520 BCE, as the first of the exiles were returning from Babylon. Along with the prophet Haggai he encouraged the rebuilding of the Temple and the revitalizing of Jewish life under Joshua the High Priest and the governor Zerubavel. The connection between the haftara, the last chapter of his book, and Sukkot, is direct. In a verse that became one of the best known in the prayer book, Zechariah foresees a day when all the nations of the world will acknowledge the sovereignty of God (“On that day the LORD shall be One and His name One”). They will come to worship in Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot, which will become the universal festival of rain. Before that happens, however, there will be a major confrontation between Israel and its enemies. Initially Jews will suffer setbacks, but God will then fight for His people and defeat its enemies for all time. Jerusalem will re-emerge as the diadem of the earth, the world center of faith in a new order of peace. A new tone entered prophecy during and especially after the Babylonian exile. Beginning in Babylon with Ezekiel, we gain a sense of the prophets “wandering between two worlds,” a past that has gone, and a future seemingly powerless to be born. The times are out of joint, there is global disorder, new empires are battling for supremacy, barbarians are invading the region, and the people of the covenant, at a low ebb economically, politically and spiritually, are caught in a vortex of alien forces. The late prophets lost none of their faith in the eventual restoration of Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple. But there is a mounting sense that this will not happen within the normal terms of history. There will be a major confrontation in which the universe will be shaken to its foundations, after which Israel will emerge triumphant and at peace, and Jerusalem, especially on Sukkot, will be acknowledged as the spiritual center of the world.

HAFTARA FOR THE SECOND DAY OF SUKKOT Four hundred and eighty years after the exodus, King Solomon set in motion the building of the Temple, bringing the entire journey of slavery-to-freedom to its culmination. The nation now had a land, a king, and a capital city, Jerusalem. But there was as yet no permanent home for God at the spiritual center-point of the nation. The plan to build a Temple had been conceived by King David, but he was told by God, through the prophet Nathan, that it would be his son who would build it (II Sam. 7). The idea of such a sanctuary had been anticipated long before, in the Song at the Sea, at a critical moment in the exodus itself: “You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance – the place, LORD, You made for Your dwelling, the sanctuary, LORD, Your hands established” (Ex. 15:17). The construction took seven years. Eleven months later the formal con­secration took place, the celebrations lasting for two weeks. The second week coincided with Sukkot, which thereafter became associated with the Temple and its consecration. The Second Temple was also inaugurated on Sukkot (Ezra 3:1–6), and even the re-consecration by the Maccabees after the defilement of the Greeks, though it took place later in the year, on Ḥanukka, was also modeled on Sukkot (see II Maccabees 10:6–8).