The festival or the town or the booth?
Genesis 33:17 names it as a town in the tribe of Gad (cf Joshua 13:27; Judges 8:5; 1 Kings 7:46).
Psalms 60:8 and 108:8 refer to Emek Sukot (עמק סכות), "the valley of Sukot".
Exodus 12:37 and 13:20, as well as Numbers 33:5, make it a station of the Beney Yisra-El in their desert wanderings.
Are these all the same place? We cannot know, in part because we cannot state for certain what the route of the Exodus was, in part because the name is one of those that tends to crop up repeatedly, in the same way that there are 88 towns named Washington in the USA, and almost as many in the UK include Newtown in their designation. It is simply a matter of thinking through the process by which nomadic peoples, accustomed to living in tents, either become sedentary and put up reed houses, mud houses, palm booths, and other semi-temporary dwellings, or establish caravanserai in the same manner, to provide hostelry for those still wandering. Many Berber villages across North Africa are still sukot to this day.
The root is Sukah (סכה) = "a booth", or a cot made of leaves and branches interwoven (Jonah 4:5; Job 27:18; Isaiah 4:6).
Chag Ha Sukot (חג הסכות) is the Feast of Tabernacles - Leviticus 23:34; Deuteronomy 16:13.
Tents made of curtains are also called Sukot (Leviticus 23:43; 2 Samuel 11:11 and 22:12). It is not immediately obvious how or why a tent would be made out of curtains (but see illustration); I presume it is a euphemism in the manner of the French "toilette", which is... a "tent made of curtains".
It is also used poetically for the habitation of YHVH in Psalm 18:12 and Job 36:29, and literally for a cattle booth in Genesis 33:17 and a lion's lair in Job 38:40.
The aboriginal root is Sach, or Soch (סך), which came to be used to mean "a crowd" or "a multitude of people"; but this was a metaphorical use derived from its proper meaning which is "a thicket of trees". Soch in Psalm 27:5 and 76:3 = "hut, cottage, booth, thicket of trees, lair of wild beasts."
Sukot-Benot (סכות-בנות) in 2 Kings 17:30 were booths which the Babylonian colonists who were brought to Shomron (Samaria) made for their idols. Note that Benot means "daughters": i.e. it should be "banot". In fact these tents containing teraphim much resemble the Ohel Mo'ed, the tent of the sanctuary; the Babylonian ones were used for ritual prostitution, (cf Kadeshah); Gesenius conjectures that Benot = "daughters" is a misreading of Bamot (במות) = "consecrated in high places" rather than an error for Banot, and this is highly plausible. The tent in which Yitschak (Isaac) married Rivkah (Rebecca), and which is known as Ohel Sarah - the tent of Sarah - was such a tent.
Amos 5:26 has Sikut (סכות) as an imitation of the tent of the Tabernacle (see the link to Ohel Mo'ed), built by idolatrous Beney Yisra-El. The idol is not named, though it would not be terribly difficult to identify her.
Clearly these were very ancient places of worship, and the model is the Bedouin sheikh's own tent (see illustration, above).
The Sukiyim (סכיים) mentioned in 2 Chronicles 12:3 were a nomadic tribe from the Ethiopian Libyan desert; the link being that nomads "dwell in tents".
Tents made of curtains are also called Sukot (Leviticus 23:43; 2 Samuel 11:11 and 22:12). It is not immediately obvious how or why a tent would be made out of curtains (but see illustration); I presume it is a euphemism in the manner of the French "toilette", which is... a "tent made of curtains".
It is also used poetically for the habitation of YHVH in Psalm 18:12 and Job 36:29, and literally for a cattle booth in Genesis 33:17 and a lion's lair in Job 38:40.
The aboriginal root is Sach, or Soch (סך), which came to be used to mean "a crowd" or "a multitude of people"; but this was a metaphorical use derived from its proper meaning which is "a thicket of trees". Soch in Psalm 27:5 and 76:3 = "hut, cottage, booth, thicket of trees, lair of wild beasts."
Sukot-Benot (סכות-בנות) in 2 Kings 17:30 were booths which the Babylonian colonists who were brought to Shomron (Samaria) made for their idols. Note that Benot means "daughters": i.e. it should be "banot". In fact these tents containing teraphim much resemble the Ohel Mo'ed, the tent of the sanctuary; the Babylonian ones were used for ritual prostitution, (cf Kadeshah); Gesenius conjectures that Benot = "daughters" is a misreading of Bamot (במות) = "consecrated in high places" rather than an error for Banot, and this is highly plausible. The tent in which Yitschak (Isaac) married Rivkah (Rebecca), and which is known as Ohel Sarah - the tent of Sarah - was such a tent.
Amos 5:26 has Sikut (סכות) as an imitation of the tent of the Tabernacle (see the link to Ohel Mo'ed), built by idolatrous Beney Yisra-El. The idol is not named, though it would not be terribly difficult to identify her.
Clearly these were very ancient places of worship, and the model is the Bedouin sheikh's own tent (see illustration, above).
The Sukiyim (סכיים) mentioned in 2 Chronicles 12:3 were a nomadic tribe from the Ethiopian Libyan desert; the link being that nomads "dwell in tents".
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