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.

10637. 'Observe that which I command you this day' means, if they carry out those chief things laid down by eternal truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'observing' as, if those who acknowledge the Word do so, for 'Moses' [to whom the command 'Observe' is addressed] represents the Word, as above; and from the meaning of 'that which Jehovah commands this day' as the chief things laid down by eternal truth, for the things that Jehovah commands are Divine Truths, and 'this day' means what is eternal, 2838, 3998, 4304, 6165, 6984, 9939. Those eternal truths are what verses 12-27 below contain in the internal sense. But the matters contained in the external sense are not eternal truths, only laws that the Israelite nation was required to adhere to because of the truths those laws held within them, for they serve to mean and so incorporate those truths. Furthermore the need for that nation to adhere to those laws existed up until the Lord disclosed the inner reaches of the Word; once these had been disclosed the outward laws incorporating them were set aside. For when a person worships the Lord in faith and love for Him, which are internal things, he has no need of the external things serving to mean them; for then those internal things themselves reside with him, and not types and shadows of them. All this was so with the commands that the feast of unleavened bread should be kept in the month of Abib and that during it unleavened bread should be eaten for seven days; that all things opening the womb should be given to God; that whatever opened the womb among asses should be redeemed or else have its neck broken; that the firstborn of sons were to be redeemed; that the feast of weeks should be celebrated, and also the feast of ingathering; that three times in the year every male should be seen before Jehovah; that they should not offer sacrifices with anything made from yeast; and that a kid should not be boiled in its mother's milk. But although obedience to these outward laws has been set aside they are still the holy and Divine things of the Word, because what they hold within them internally is holy.