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.

9222. 'And you shall not curse a governor of your people' means that teachings presenting the truth are not to be, either - not to be blasphemed. This is clear from the meaning of 'a governor (or prince)' as the Church's primary truths, dealt with in 5044; from the meaning of 'people' as those governed by truths taught by doctrine, dealt with in 1259, 1260, 2928, 3295, 3581, 7207; and from the meaning of 'cursing' as blaspheming. What connection these prohibitions have with each other is evident from the internal sense; for 'not reviling God' means not blaspheming God's truth, and 'not cursing a governor' means not blaspheming teachings that present the truth, God's truth being the Word, and the Church's teachings being truth drawn from the Word.

Let the nature of blasphemy against God's truth be stated briefly here. God's truth is the Word and teachings drawn from the Word. Those who repudiate it in their heart blaspheme it even though they praise and declare it with their lips. Hidden within repudiation lies blasphemy, which also bursts out into the open when they are left to think by themselves, especially in the next life. For there when external [restraints] have been removed people's hearts speak.

[2] Those who blaspheme or repudiate the Word cannot receive anything at all of the truth or good of faith. For the Word teaches the existence of the Lord, of heaven and hell, of life after death, of faith and charity, and of many other things, about which no one would have any knowledge whatever without the Word or revelation, 8944. Therefore those who repudiate the Word cannot receive anything taught by the Word; for when it is read or heard by them it is met with a negative attitude of mind that either annihilates truth or turns it into falsity.

[3] First of all therefore with a member of the Church comes belief in the Word; and this is the chief characteristic of one who is guided by the truth of faith and governed by the good of love. But with those who are steeped in the evils of self-love and love of the world non-belief in the Word is the chief characteristic; for when they think about it they instantly reject it and also blaspheme it. If anyone were to see how great the blasphemies are against the Word, and what they are like, with those who are steeped in the evils of those kinds of love he would be horrified. While in the world the person is unaware of their existence, since they lie concealed behind the ideas of his conscious thought, and it is this that comes out into speech with other people. Even so they are revealed in the next life, where they appear horrible.

[4] There are two kinds of blasphemies - those that come out of the understanding but not at the same time out of the will, and those that come out of the will by way of the understanding. The second kind are the ones which are so horrible, not the first. Those that come out of the will by way of the understanding spring from evil of life, whereas those that come solely out of the understanding and not at the same time out of the will spring from falsity of doctrine or from the illusions of the outward senses that deceive a person set fast in a state of ignorance. These things have been stated in order that people may know the nature of blasphemy against God's truth, that is, the Word, and against teachings drawn from it, meant by 'reviling God and cursing a governor of the people'.