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Exodus 23:14-19 : The Three Annual Festivals

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14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.

15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)

16 And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.

17 Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD.

18 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning.

19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

Commentary

 

Three Feasts

By New Christian Bible Study Staff
A loaf of homemade bread.

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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Canons of the New Church #30

  
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30. CHAPTER VII. THE LORD WHEN IN THE WORLD ENDURED THE MOST GRIEVOUS TEMPTATIONS FROM THE HELLS AS WELL AS FROM THE JEWISH CHURCH, AND BY VICTORIES IN THEM HE REDUCED ALL THINGS TO ORDER, AND AT THE SAME TIME GLORIFIED HIS HUMAN; THUS HE REDEEMED ANGELS AND MEN AND IS FOR EVER REDEEMING THEM

1. All spiritual temptations are combats against evils and falsities, and therefore against the hells; these temptations are the more grievous in proportion as they assail a man's spirit and his body at the same time, and torture both.

2. The Lord endured the most grievous temptations of all, because He fought against all the hells, and against the evils and falsities of the Jewish Church as well.

3. In the Gospels the Lord's temptations are only described to a small extent, by his combat with wild beasts, that is with satans in hell, during the forty days in the wilderness, and afterwards by the attacks of the devil, and finally by His anguish in Gethsemane and by the cruel suffering on the cross. 1 . . . His temptations or combats with the hells are, however, described in greater detail and fullness in the Prophets and in David; these because they were not visible, could not be openly declared. [Isa. 63]

4. The Lord underwent these temptations to subjugate the hells that were attacking heaven, and at the same time the Church, and to deliver angels and men from that attack, and so to save them.

5. The end-in-view of all spiritual temptation is the subduing of evil and falsity, and so of hell as well, then too the subduing of the external man at the same time, for it is into this that evils and falsities from hell inflow. For temptations are concerned with the dominion of evil over good, and of the external man over the internal. Whichever side, therefore, secures victory secures dominion also. And so, when victory is on the side of good, good seizes dominion over evil, as does also the internal man over the external.

6. The Lord suffered those temptations from childhood right on to the last period of his life, and so subjugated the hells successively, and successively glorified His Human; and in the last temptation on the cross, the most grievous of all, He fully conquered the hells, and made His Human Divine.

7. The Lord fought with the hells, and also against the falsities and evils of the Jewish Church, as Divine Truth itself, or the Word, which He was; and He suffered Himself to be reviled, to have indignities heaped upon Him, and to be put to death, just as the Church at that time did with the Word. It was in almost the same way the prophets were treated, because they represented the Lord in respect of the Word, and so in the case of the Lord, who was The Prophet, because He was the Word itself. That this was done was in accordance with Divine Order. 2

8. An image of the Lord's victories over the hells and of the glorification of His Human, by means of temptations, is presented in man's regeneration; for just as the Lord subjugated the hells and made His Human Divine, so, in a man's case, He subjugates them and makes him spiritual, and so regenerates him.

9. It is well known that the Lord rescues a man from the jaws of the devil, that is of hell, and raises him to Himself into heaven, and that He does this for the man by drawing him back from evils, which is effected through his contrition and repentance. These two states are temptations which are means of regeneration. 3

Footnotes:

1. The Nordenskjold manuscript has a mark here as if there were some omissions. Perhaps space was left for references to the Word.

2. A marginal note here reads: See Doctrine of the Lord 16, 17 in reference to the representations of the Church; as well as its being said four times of Ezekiel that "he bears the iniquities of the house of Israel"; and that the Lord was called the greatest Prophet.

3. The following annotations, of which the first is underlined, are found at the end of this chapter:

The Lord as a Prophet carried the iniquities of the Jewish Church, He did not take them away.

His glorification, or His being united with the Divine of the Father, which was in Him as the soul is in a man, could only be accomplished by a reciprocal process; the Human co-operates with the Divine; it is however originally from the Divine, nevertheless there is reception and action, or rather reaction, by the Human as of Itself.

To the extent that there was conjunction, it was brought about by both together.

In the same way as a man is regenerated and made spiritual by the Lord.

When He was an infant, He was as an infant is;

When He was a child and from childhood onwards, He grew in wisdom. Luke 2:40, 50.

It was not possible for Him to be born wisdom, but He could become wisdom in accordance with order. He progressed to full conjunction.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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