God's People . . . DANCE!
Hebraic circle dancing is a large part of the Praise, Worship, and just plain FUN of the Season of Our Joy festival! "But", you might ask, "does God find favor in seeing all these people swinging around, holding hands . . . HAVING FUN during these special times of worship and praise?" We would submit that not only does He find favor, He expects it!
We all know that God expects His people to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, that these Holy Days, the 'moedim' are 'appointments' or 'dates' we have with The Creator, but with a careful reading of the text, we find that God reveals a little more about our festival observance.
NKJ Leviticus 23:39 Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the LORD for seven days . . .
In the above passage, the phrase "you shall keep the feast of the Lord" reads like this in the Hebrew . . . "ta haggoo et hag YHVH" which means "you feast (Aleph Tav), feast to The Lord". There are two Hebrew words in this passage that are significant to our understanding of what God wants us to do during the festival. The first is 'chagag' (Strong's 2287) and the other is 'chag' (Strong's 2282 - a derivative of 2287). When you look these words up in a Hebrew dictionary you find that they not only mean 'feast', they also mean 'to swirl around, to dance'. So if we were to rewrite this passage with this understanding, it might read like this, ". . . you shall DANCE, DANCE to (with) The Lord . . ." Certainly, with our understanding that the festival is indeed "a date" and that this festival in particular pictures the Wedding Supper of the Messiah, I believe it would be appropriate to say that we are indeed "dancing with YHVH" at the festival.
Furthur study of the words related to the Hebrew word "chagag" (Strong's 2328 - "chuwg"; Strongs 2329 - "chuwg"; and Strong's 2283 - "chagah") indicate that the dance is done in a circle.
The Bible gives us a number of examples of God's people dancing during times of joy and victory.
- Miriam danced after the God defeated the Egyptians at the Red Sea - Exodus 15:20
- David danced when bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem - 2 Samual 6:14
- In the Millennial Kingdom of God young men and old will dance - Jeremiah 31:13
So, at Season of Our Joy . . . WE DANCE! We encourage you to join us on the dance floor as we praise Him during this time of celebration at Sukkot.
We have striven to make the dances easy to pick up. Yes, there will be a few old favorites, such as Roni Roni that are faster paced, but for the most part, the dances are designed to be learned quickly, using basic dance steps.
If you would like to learn more, please join us in one of the daytime break out sessions dedicated to learning beginner dance. In the evenings we plan to teach some of the fun Sabbath Praise Songs that we do often in our local congregations. We’ll also include some of the choreography to a few of the Congregational songs that we’ll be singing at the festival as well as dancing some of our old favorite Israeli Folk couples’ songs. We realize that there are basic Hebraic steps that are familiar with each fellowship. Those steps are the ones we continue to use in leading our dances.
To assist you in learning the dance, we have put together dance booklets of the choreography used in many of the past year’s dances at Sukkot. These will be available at the SOOJ table in the Resource Room.
Presentation Dances
If you would like to be more involved at this upcoming Festival of Sukkot, contact us early so we can include your gifts of praise.
Click Here to go to the Dance section of the Volunteers menu for more information.
Dance Leaders
We are always looking for future dance leaders. Click Here to go to the Dance section of the Volunteers menu for more information.
