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.

5672. 'Until Joseph's coming at midday' means up to when the internal would be present with light. This is clear from the meaning of 'until his coming' as up to when it was present; from the representation of 'Joseph' as the internal, dealt with in 5648; and from the meaning of 'midday' as a state of light, 1458, 3195, 3708. ¹ The reason 'midday' means a state of light is that the times of day, such as morning, midday, and evening, correspond to states of light in the next life; and states of light there are states of intelligence and wisdom, for the reason that the light of heaven holds intelligence and wisdom within it. The changing states of light there are like those times of day on earth - morning, midday, and evening. The states of shade akin to evening do not however have anything to do with the sun there, which is the Lord who is constantly shedding His light, but with the selfhood that is essentially the angels' own. For insofar as this selfhood takes over in their lives they pass into a state of shade or evening; but insofar as this selfhood gives way to the heavenly selfhood they move into a state of light. From this one may see where the correspondence of midday to a state of light has its origin.

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