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.

3973. 'Send me away and let me go to my own place and to my own land' means that at that time there was in the natural represented by Jacob a strong desire to arrive at a state in which it would be joined to everything Divine in the Rational. This is clear from the representation of 'Jacob', who is the speaker, as the good of natural truth, dealt with immediately above in 3972; from the meaning of 'place' as state, dealt with in 2625, 2837, 3356, 3387; and from the meaning of 'land' in this case as everything Divine in the Rational. For 'my land' is used to mean Isaac his father and Rebekah his mother, it being to them that he wished to be sent away and to go. 'Isaac' means the Divine Rational as regards good, see 2083, 2630, 3012, 3194, 3210, and 'Rebekah' Divine truth joined to the Divine good of the Rational, 3012, 3013, 3077. It is evident from the affectional content of the words themselves that a strong desire to be joined to these is meant.