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.

9417. 'And the law and the commandment' means truth in general and in particular. This is clear from the meaning of 'the law' as truth in general; and from the meaning of 'the commandment' as truth in particular. In the Word laws are divided up into commandments, judgements, and statutes, 'commandments' being used to mean laws of life, 'judgements' to mean laws of the civic state, and 'statutes' to mean laws of worship, 8972. However, all these together are called by the general term 'the law', and the individual requirements of the law are called 'commandments', as is clear from a large number of places in the Word. So it is that when the expression 'the law and the commandment' is used, truth in general and in particular is meant.