They are keeping the gayest, the merriest, the prettiest feast in the whole year, the Feast of Tabernacles.

It was a saying amongst the Jews, that unless a man had been present at the Feast of Tabernacles he did not know what joy was.

And in Nehemiah's time this feast was kept more fully and with more rejoicing than it had been kept for a thousand years; no one had ever witnessed such a Feast of Tabernacles since the days of Joshua.
The city was a mass of green booths, made with branches of olive, pine, myrtle, and palm; and in these the people lived, and ate, and slept for eight days; whilst the whole city was lighted up, and glad music was constantly heard, and the people feasted, and laughed, and made merry.
It was the 22nd day of the month Tisri when the Feast of Tabernacles was ended, and only two days afterwards there came a remarkable change.
Look at Jerusalem again, you would hardly know it to be the same place.
The green booths are all gone, they have been carefully cleared away.
There is not a branch, or a banner, or a bit of decoration to be seen.
The bright holiday dresses, the gay blue, and red, and yellow, and lilac robes, the smart, many-coloured turbans have all been laid by; there is not a sign of one of them.

We see instead an extraordinary company of men, women and children making their way to the open space by the water gate.

They are covered with rough coarse sackcloth, a material made of black goats' hair and used for making sacks.