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.

9149. 'When a man delivers to his companion silver or vessels for safe keeping' means truths derived from good, and factual knowledge that accords with them, in the memory. This is clear from the meaning of 'silver' as truth derived from good, dealt with in 1551, 2954, 5658, 6914, 6917, 7999, 8932; from the meaning of 'vessels' as factual knowledge, dealt with in 3068, the reason why accordant factual knowledge is meant being that all spiritual truths are stored within known facts as their vessels, 3079, and all factual knowledge accords with the truths it contains; and from the meaning of 'for safe keeping' as for retention in the memory. For in the spiritual sense, in which truths and factual knowledge are the subject, 'being placed in safe keeping' means being held in the memory, since this is where they are placed in safe keeping. 'A man's delivery of something to his companion for safe keeping' means storing it in his own memory; for when the sense of the letter speaks of two different persons, as it does here of a man and of a companion, one person is meant in the internal sense. For the two truths - or else truth and the factual knowledge that accords with it - can exist within a person as man and companion.