The Feast of Tabernacles was to be forever.  Lev. xxiii. 41.  “It shall be a statute for ever, in your generations.”  The observance of this Festival is particularly mentioned in the prophecies, which foretell a future settlement of the Jews in their own land, as obligatory on all the world; as if an union of worship at Jerusalem was to be, according to them, effected among all nations by the united observance of this Festival there, see Zech. 14; what he there says is confirmed by what Isaiah prophecied concerning the same period.  Is. 2.  “It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.  And many people shall go, and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.  For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  And he shall judge among the nations, and rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation. shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

With respect to all the Laws of Moses, it is evident from the manner in which they were promulgated, that they were intended to be of perpetual obligation upon the Hebrew nation, and that by the observance of them they were to be distinguished from the other nations, see Deut. xxvi. 16.

The observance of their peculiar Laws was the express condition on which the Israelites were to continue in possession of the promised land; and though on account of their disobedience they were to be driven out of it, they had the strongest assurances given them that they should never be utterly destroyed, like many other nations who should oppress them; but that on their repentance God would gather them from the remote parts of the world, and bring them to their own country again.  And both Moses, and the later Prophets assure them, that in consequence of their becoming obedient to God in all things, which it is asserted they will, (and which may be the natural consequence of the discipline they will have gone through,) they shall be continued in the peaceable enjoyment of the land of promise, in its greatest extent to the end of time.  See to this purpose Deut. iv. 25, &c.; also.  Deut. 30, where it is thus written.

“And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee; and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul; that, then, the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return, and gather thee from all