And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.
Jacob journeyed to Succoth - [Hebrew, cukot (H5521), booths, formed of green boughs and branches interwoven, as a shelter from the heat (Isaiah 4:6; John 4:5).] Jacob, who was still on his journey, erected at this stage his х bayit (H1004)] (moveable) house or tent (Gesenius) for his family, while the booths were for his cattle. The flocks in the East being generally allowed to remain in the open fields by night and day during winter and summer, and seldom put under covert, the erection of booths by Jacob is recorded as an unusual circumstance; and perhaps the almost tropical climate of the Jordan valley may have rendered some shelter circumstance; and perhaps the almost tropical climate of the Jordan valley may have rendered some shelter necessary.
Succoth, which is mentioned here by a prolepsis, was the name given to the first station at which Jacob halted on his arrival in Canaan. His posterity, when dwelling in houses of stone, built a city there and called it Succoth, to commemorate the fact of their ancestor having made it a halting-place. 'It is identified with the ruins of Sakut, in a contracted 'Emek, called "the valley of Succoth" (Psalms 60:8; Psalms 108:8), which forms part of El-Ghor, the valley of the Jordan. And the town itself stood, if its position is rightly marked on the maps, south of the Jabbok, in the angle formed by this stream and the Jordan, almost equidistant from both, afterward allotted to the tribe of Gad.