The Bible

 

Exodus 23:14-19 : The Three Annual Festivals

Study

14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.

15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)

16 And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.

17 Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD.

18 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning.

19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

The Bible

 

Ezekiel 44:30

Study

       

30 And the first of all the firstfruits of all things, and every oblation of all, of every sort of your oblations, shall be the priest's: ye shall also give unto the priest the first of your dough, that he may cause the blessing to rest in thine house.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #8629

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

8629. A certain spirit rising up from the lower earth came to me and said that he had heard the things I had spoken to the other spirits, but that he had understood scarcely anything of what had been said about spiritual life and light. I asked him whether he wished to learn about those things; he said he had not come with the intention of doing so, from which I concluded that he did not wish to. He was extremely stupid. Angels told me that when he lived as a person in the world he had been one of those quite famous for their learning. He was a cold person, which I became clearly aware of from his breath. This was an indication that he saw things in merely natural and not at all in spiritual light, thus that knowledge served not to open but to close the way to the light of heaven for him.

  
/ 10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.