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.

9990. 'Take one young bull, a son of the herd' means purification of the natural or external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'a young bull' as the good of innocence and charity in the natural or external man, dealt with in 9391. And since the words 'a son of the herd' are used, the truth of that good is also meant, truth being meant by 'a son', and the natural level by 'the herd'. For the meaning of 'a son' as truth, see 489, 491, 533, 2623, 3373, 9807, and for that of 'the herd' as the natural level, 2566, 5913, 8937. The reason why purification of the natural or external man is meant here by 'a young bull, a son of the herd' is that the animal was offered in sacrifice, and sacrifices were signs of purification from evils and falsities, or expiation, in this instance purification from evils and falsities present in the natural or external man. But purification in the spiritual or internal man is meant by the burnt offering of a ram.

[2] To know what each kind of burnt offering or sacrifice represented one must first know that in a human being there is the external and the internal, and that in each there is that which belongs to truth and that which belongs to good. Therefore when a person is to be regenerated he must be regenerated as to the external and as to the internal, and in each as to truth and as to good. But before a person can be regenerated he must be purified from evils and from falsities, for these stand in the way. Purifications of the external man were represented by burnt offerings and sacrifices of oxen, young bulls, and he-goats, but purifications of the internal man by burnt offerings and sacrifices of rams, kids, and she-goats, and purification of the internal itself, or that which is inmost, by those of lambs. Consequently from the actual animals offered in sacrifice one may see what kind of purification or expiation was being represented.

[3] The reason for saying 'was being represented' is that burnt offerings and sacrifices did not purify or expiate a person, but merely served to represent purification or expiation. For is there anyone who fails to recognize that such offerings of animals do not take away any evil or falsity at all that is present with a person? - see the places in the Word quoted in 2180. The reason why those offerings did not take evil or falsity away, but merely represented such a removal of it, was that only a representative of the Church was established among the Israelite and Jewish nation, which served to join them to heaven, and through heaven to the Lord, see what has been shown on this subject in the places referred to in 9320 (end), 9380. But what was represented specifically by burnt offerings and sacrifices of young bulls, rams, and lambs, will be seen in what follows in the present chapter, since they are the subject there.