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.

544. Who would shepherd all nations with a rod of iron. This symbolizes doctrine which by truths drawn from the literal sense of the Word, together with rational arguments in accord with people's natural sight, will convince all those willing to be convinced whose worship is a lifeless worship owing to their divorcing faith from charity.

This refers to the doctrine of the New Church, because it is said about the male child, which symbolizes that doctrine (no. 543). To shepherd means, symbolically, to teach and instruct (no. 383), here to convince those people who are willing to be convinced. Nations symbolize people caught up in evil practices (no. 483), here people engaged in dead worship in consequence of their divorcing faith from charity, because these are the subject here, and they are caught up in evil practices. For when charity is set aside, no goodness is practiced, and where there is no goodness, evil is present instead. To rule with a rod of iron means, symbolically, to do so by means of the truths in the Word's literal sense, and at the same time by rational considerations drawn from people's natural sight, as may be seen in no. 148 above.