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.

8263. 'I will sing to Jehovah' means that glory belongs to the Lord alone. This is clear from the meaning of 'singing to Jehovah' as ascribing glory to the Lord, dealt with just above in 8261, that is, as saying that glory belongs to Him. The reason why it belongs to Him alone is that in the Word 'Jehovah' means the Lord, 8261, so that He alone is God. Various places throughout the Word say that glory and honour must belong to God alone. Anyone unacquainted with the inner teachings of the Word may suppose that the Lord desires and loves glory in the way a person in the world does; and he may suppose this because glory is appropriate to Him above all others in the universe. But the Lord does not desire glory for His own sake, only for the sake of the person who ascribes it to Him. A person who ascribes glory to Him does so because he venerates Him as the One who is supreme and humbly regards himself as nothing in comparison. And since reverence and humility are both present when a person ascribes glory to the Lord, he is in a fit state to receive the inflow of goodness from the Lord, and so also of love towards Him. This is why the Lord desires a person to ascribe glory to Him, see 4347, 4593, 5957. Regarding the flow of goodness from the Lord, that it enters a humble heart, 3994, 7478.