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

 

Leviticus 23:17

Study

       

17 Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD.

Commentary

 

Milk

  
The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer

Water represents true ideas about day-to-day life, and other drinks and liquids in general represent different forms of truth. Milk is a drink that contains fat, and fat represents the highest human love: the love of the Lord. Because of the fat, milk represents the true ideas that flow naturally from the love of the Lord. This is not something most of us experience, because most of us are caught up in a battle between our selfish desires and our good ones. Because of that, we need to really look for what is true and use that to figure out how to be good; we're led by ideas in our minds. But people -- or angels -- who are in a state of love to the Lord have no such struggles. They know what's right and wrong automatically, based on whether ideas fit their love or not. That kind of truth -- the truth that comes from love -- is represented by milk.