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.

7352. 'And the river will cause the frogs to crawl forth' means the reasonings arising from those falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'the river of Egypt' as falsity, dealt with in 6693, 7307; and from the meaning of 'the frogs' as reasonings, dealt with immediately above in 7351. The reason why 'frogs' are reasonings is that they live in water, in which they make talkative sounds and croak, and also live in unclean surroundings. What reasoning arising from utter falsities is will be illustrated by several examples. Reasoning arising from utter falsities takes place if a person attributes everything to natural forces and scarcely anything to the Divine, when in fact everything owes its existence to the Divine, and natural forces are merely the means by which it is brought into being. Reasoning arising from utter falsities takes place if a person believes that a human being is similar to an animal, being more perfect only by virtue of his ability to think, and for this reason believes that when he dies a human being is similar to an animal. Because he refuses to believe that a human being is linked to the Divine through thought which belongs to faith, and through affection which belongs to love, and as a consequence refuses to believe in resurrection and eternal life, what he says arises from utter falsities. It is similar with a person who believes that hell has no existence, and also with him who believes that a person has the pleasurable gift of life only while he is in the world and should therefore take full advantage of it, because when he dies he dies completely. Reasoning arising from utter falsities takes place if a person believes that all things are attributable to one's own prudence and good fortune, and not to Divine Providence except on a very general level. It also takes place if a person believes that religion exists for no other reason than to keep the simple in check. Reasoning arising from utter falsities takes place in particular if people believe that the Word is not Divine. In short reasoning arising from utter falsities takes place if people refuse completely to believe God's truths.