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.

6740. 'Shall I go and call you a woman, a wet nurse, from the Hebrew women?' means a perception that good from the true Church should be instilled into it. This is clear from the meaning of 'a woman, a wet nurse as the instillation of good, dealt with in 4563, for 'the milk' instilled by a wet nurse means the good of truth or, what amounts to the same thing, the celestial-spiritual, 2184, and from the meaning of 'the Hebrew women' as things that constitute the Church, dealt with in 6675, 6684. A perception that good from the true Church should be instilled is meant by '[his sister] said, Shall I go and call?' because in the internal sense the truth of good which has perception is meant by her, whereas in the sense of the letter the girl herself who had no such perception is meant. The fact that 'a nurse' means the instillation of good is also evident in Isaiah,

They will bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters will be carried on their shoulder. And kings will be your foster fathers (nutricius) and their queens your nurses (nutrix). Isaiah 49:22-23.

'Kings who are foster fathers' stands for the instillation of truth that belongs to intelligence, 'queens who are nurses' for the instillation of good that belongs to wisdom. In the same prophet,

Lift up your eyes round about and see; they all gather together, they come to you. Your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried at the side by nurses. Isaiah 60:4.

'Sons who come from afar' stands for truths among gentiles, who are said 'to come from afar' because they are remote from the Church's truth. 'Daughters who are carried at the side by nurses' stands for forms of good which are constantly being instilled, 'daughters' being forms of good and 'nurses' those who instill.