The Children of Israel were told to keep three feasts each year - the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of first fruits, and the feast of ingathering. Should we still do that?

In Exodus 23:14-16, Moses receives the instructions about these feasts. Those three verses in Exodus comprise our brief story. Their inner meaning is explained in Arcana Coelestia 9286-9296.

There are three feasts. In the Word, the number three represents a completeness, a sense of things being covered from beginning to end. Our thankfulness to the Lord is supposed to keep going - to endure.

The first feast, of unleavened bread, stands for worship, for our thankfulness for the Lord's action in our minds to get rid of false ideas. That enables us to start to receive good loves.

The second feast, of first fruits, relates to the planting of true ideas in that "soil" of initial loves for doing good.

The third feast, of harvest, or ingathering, stands for the time when, by applying our true ideas, we receive real good - loves of the neighbor and of the Lord - that become the middle of our lives. This is the state of rebirth, where we have - by working through the year (our lives), and enduring in thankfulness, allowed the Lord to get rid of our false ideas, and push our evil loves to the periphery, so that good can work, and be fruitful.

These feasts, then, represent the progress of our spiritual lives. In some manner, we need to keep them.

2066. 'And I will also give you a son by her' means the Rational. This is clear from the meaning of 'a son' as truth, dealt with in 489, 491, 533, 1147. And because the whole of the rational originates in truth, 'a son' here means the rational. The Lord's first rational was represented and meant by Ishmael, born from the servant-girl Hagar. This was dealt with previously in Chapter 16. The second Rational, which is the subject here, is represented and meant by Isaac who was to be born from Sarah. The former, that represented by Ishmael, was the rational that was subsequently cast out of the house, but this latter Rational, which is represented by Isaac, is the one that remained in the house, because it was Divine. This rational is in the Lord's Divine mercy to be described in the next chapter where Isaac is the subject.