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.

3599. 'And Isaac his father answered, and said to him' means a perception that natural good would be made Divine. This is clear from the representation of 'Isaac' as the Lord's Divine Rational as regards the Divine Good there, dealt with in 3012, 3194, 3210, from the meaning, in historical descriptions in the Word, of 'laying' as perceiving, often dealt with already, and from the representation of 'Esau', to whom Isaac addressed these words, as Natural good, also dealt with many times above. That it would be made Divine is clear from the blessing which is the subject in what follows. It has been stated above that 'Esau' represents the Lord's Divine Natural as regards Divine Good, and 'Jacob' His Divine Natural as regards Divine Truth; but here 'Esau' represents Natural good that was to be made Divine, and in the verses prior to this 'Jacob' has represented Natural truth which too was to be made Divine. The implications of all this may become clear from what has been stated above in 3494, 3576. Yet to make the matter clearer still let a further brief statement be made about it here.

[2] Natural good, which Esau represents at first, is the Lord's Natural when He was a young child. This was Divine from the Father but human from the mother; and to the extent it was from the mother it was steeped in hereditary evil Its nature being such it was not able instantly to exist within that kind of order in which it could receive the Divine that was present inmostly, but it had first of all to be brought into order by the Lord. It is similar with the truth which Jacob represents; for where good is, so must truth be if it is to be anything at all. The whole area of thought, where truth resides, is joined to the area of will, where good resides. This is so even with young children. Once therefore the Lord had brought into order the Natural as regards Good and as regards Truth within Himself - into the kind of order in which the Natural received the Divine, so that He Himself was flowing in from His own Divine - and once He had gradually driven out everything human received from the mother, 'Esau' at that point represents the Lord's Divine Natural as regards Good, and 'Jacob' His Divine Natural as regards Truth.

[3] But Esau and Jacob represent the Divine Good and the Divine Truth of the Lord's Divine Natural when they have been joined together as brothers. Regarded in themselves Divine Good and Divine Truth are a single power working together to give form to and to receive good and truth that are put into practice. The latter, that is to say, good and truth put into practice, are dealt with later on. These considerations show how many are the arcana contained in the internal sense of the Word. Those arcana are such that not even the most general aspects of them are intelligible to man, as is the case perhaps with those that have just been referred to. How then [can he grasp] the countless specific details regarding them? But they are suited to the grasp and understanding of angels who gain from the Lord heavenly ideas concerning these things and others like them, which ideas are enlightened by representatives full of indescribable pleasantness and bliss. From this one can have an idea of what angelic wisdom is like, yet only a remote idea of it because such things remain in the unenlightened part of man's understanding.