The Feast of Unleavened Bread · Chag HaMatzot
The Feast of Unleavened Bread
For seven days, no leaven in the house, and bread baked too fast to rise. Luke calls the whole eight-day span by one name: “the feast of unleavened bread, which is called the Passover”. Paul later takes the household chore of clearing out old leaven and runs its own logic straight onto the church.
Bernard Picart, The Passover Seder Among Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam, 1725. Public domain.
Summary
Unleavened Bread runs seven days starting the day after Passover, and by the New Testament the two feasts are kept as one occasion under one name. Israel eats matzah, plain flatbread baked too fast to rise, and clears every trace of leaven from the house, and Paul takes that yearly chore and turns it into an argument for the whole church.
- Exodus 12 institutes the feast the same night as Passover, and Luke 22:1 names the combined observance as one: the feast of unleavened bread, which is called the Passover.
- Deuteronomy 16:3 names the loaf itself 'the bread of affliction,' baked in haste, remembered for life.
- The Hebrew law legislates against two things: seor, the leavening agent put away, and chametz, the leavened bread forbidden to be eaten.
- 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 is Paul's own reading of the feast, quoted here at full strength: purge the old leaven, keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
- The pierced-and-striped picture some modern teachers draw from matzah is named honestly as a modern teaching, not a claim about what the bread meant at Sinai.
One Feast, Two Names
Exodus 12:14-20: instituted the same night as Passover, and never really separated again
Passover and Unleavened Bread are two commands given in the same chapter, on the same night, and Scripture treats them as one occasion from the start. Passover is the fourteenth of the month: the lamb, slain and eaten. Unleavened Bread follows immediately, the fifteenth through the twenty-first: seven days with no leaven anywhere in an Israelite house. By the time of the Gospels the fusion is complete enough that Luke can name the whole span with a single title.
And this day will be a memorial for you, and you are to celebrate it as a feast to the LORD, as a permanent statute for the generations to come. For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the leaven from your houses. Whoever eats anything leavened from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day you are to hold a sacred assembly, and another on the seventh day. You must not do any work on those days, except to prepare the meals—that is all you may do. So you are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your divisions out of the land of Egypt. You must keep this day as a permanent statute for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat unleavened bread, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days there must be no leaven found in your houses. If anyone eats something leavened, that person, whether a foreigner or native of the land, must be cut off from the congregation of Israel. You are not to eat anything leavened; eat unleavened bread in all your homes.”The feast instituted: a memorial, an ordinance forever, seven days, and the penalty for eating leaven.
Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching,One name for both feasts: this is how the New Testament actually speaks of the week.
- 7 days15-21 Nisan, the feast's full span
- 2holy convocations, first day and seventh
- h4682matstsah, unleavened bread, 53 occurrences
- 1 nameLuke 22:1 for both feasts together
Seven Days Without Leaven
Exodus 13:3-10 and Leviticus 23:6-8: the ordinance restated, and folded into the whole calendar
So Moses told the people, “Remember this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; for the LORD brought you out of it by the strength of His hand. And nothing leavened shall be eaten. Today, in the month of Abib, you are leaving. And when the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites—the land He swore to your fathers that He would give you, a land flowing with milk and honey—you shall keep this service in this month. For seven days you are to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the LORD. Unleavened bread shall be eaten during those seven days. Nothing leavened may be found among you, nor shall leaven be found anywhere within your borders. And on that day you are to explain to your son, ‘This is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ It shall be a sign for you on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that the Law of the LORD is to be on your lips. For with a mighty hand the LORD brought you out of Egypt. Therefore you shall keep this statute at the appointed time year after year.Moses retells the command the day of the exodus itself: no leavened bread, kept as a sign on the hand.
“There shall no leavened bread, &c.--The words are elliptical, and the meaning of the clause may be paraphrased thus:--‘For by strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place, in such haste that there could or should be no leavened bread eaten.’”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Exodus 13:3
On the fifteenth day of the same month begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD. For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to hold a sacred assembly; you are not to do any regular work. For seven days you are to present an offering made by fire to the LORD. On the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly; you must not do any regular work.’”The feast set inside the whole year's calendar of appointed times.
“The care and strictness enjoined in this matter were designed, (1.) To make the feast the more solemn, and consequently the more taken notice of by their children, who would ask, ‘Why is so much ado made?’ (2.) To teach us how solicitous we should be to put away from us all sin, 1 Cor. v. 7 .”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Puritan
Exodus 13:6-7
Two reasons for the ordinance stand side by side in the text, and neither erases the other. The bread was baked in haste, because Israel left Egypt with no time to let dough rise. And the law's own strictness, Henry notices, already reaches toward the reading Paul will give it: a house searched clean of leaven, on the way to becoming a picture of a life searched clean of sin.
The Bread of Affliction
Deuteronomy 16:3-4, 16: the loaf given its own name
You must not eat leavened bread with it; for seven days you are to eat with it unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left the land of Egypt in haste—so that you may remember for the rest of your life the day you left the land of Egypt. No leaven is to be found in all your land for seven days, and none of the meat you sacrifice in the evening of the first day shall remain until morning.The bread of affliction, eaten so the exodus is remembered for life.
Three times a year all your men are to appear before the LORD your God in the place He will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. No one should appear before the LORD empty-handed.One of three pilgrimage feasts an Israelite male could not skip.
“Bread of affliction - Because, being baked without leaven, it was unsavoury, and put them in mind of their afflictive bondage in Egypt.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Deuteronomy 16:3
Deuteronomy gives the loaf a name Exodus and Leviticus do not: “the bread of affliction.” Plain, fast-baked bread, without the comfort of leaven, eaten deliberately so the memory of bondage in Egypt travels with every bite, every year, for as long as the nation exists.
What Leaven Is, and Why It Leaves the House
two Hebrew words, and the search that still happens every spring
The law legislates against two things, not one. שְׂאֹר seor is the leavening agent itself, the old dough or starter that makes bread rise; Exodus 12:15 and 19 both command it put away and kept out of the house. חָמֵץ chametz is the product of that agent, the bread already leavened; it is what a person is forbidden to eat. The house must be clear of the starter, not only the finished loaf.
Jewish households keep this to the present day. On the night before Passover, homes are searched for every trace of leaven by candlelight, and the last crumbs are burned the next morning: a custom called bedikat chametz, “the checking for leaven.” The Mishnah, the first written code of Jewish oral law, opens its whole Passover tractate with this search.
The search, from the site's own Hebraic floorMishnah Pesachim 1:1
“Before Passover, to this day, Jewish homes are cleaned of every crumb of leaven (chametz): the Mishnah opens its Passover tractate with the search for leaven by candlelight on the night before the feast (Pesachim 1:1), and the search is still done, traditionally by candle, with the last crumbs burned in the morning.”
“Cut off - The penalty inflicted on those who transgressed the command may be accounted for on the ground that it was an act of rebellion; but additional light is thrown upon it by the typical meaning assigned to leaven by our Lord, Mat 16:6.”
Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832-1869Presbyterian
Exodus 12:19
Barnes points straight at the reason leaven becomes a moral symbol rather than staying a kitchen ingredient: Jesus Himself gives it a typical meaning, warning His disciples to “beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6). Once the Lord names it a figure for corrupting teaching, Paul’s later use of the same picture for corrupting sin stands on ground Jesus already marked out.
Christ Our Passover
1 Corinthians 5:6-8: Paul does not invent the picture, he runs the custom's own logic
Paul is writing to a church that kept the actual yearly custom: searching a house clean of every trace of leaven before the feast. He does not compare the church to that chore. He takes the chore itself and hands it back to the Corinthians as an argument.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth.Purge the old leaven. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
“Christ our passover being sacrificed for us, and we having participated in the blessed fruits of that sacrifice to our comfort, let us keep the feast in a holy conversation, free from the leaven of malice towards our brethren and hypocrisy towards God, and with the unleavened bread of sincerity and love.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Puritan
1 Corinthians 5:8
“Let us keep the feast - Let us feed on him by faith. Here is a plain allusion to the Lord's supper, which was instituted in the room of the passover.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
1 Corinthians 5:8
Wesley draws the line straight to the Lord’s Supper, kept “in the room of the passover.” The feast Israel keeps with an actual clean house is, in Paul’s hands, the same feast the church keeps with a clean life: not with old leaven, not with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Buried in the Feast
the crucifixion week falls inside this feast, and a picture some teachers draw from the loaf itself
Luke 22:1 already places the whole crucifixion week inside the fused feast: the Last Supper, the trial, the death and the burial all fall within Passover and Unleavened Bread, kept as one occasion. That timing is walked in full on the Last Supper’s own page and is not repeated here.
A picture some modern teachers draw from the loaf itself is worth naming honestly, because it is widely taught and easily overclaimed. Matzah, hand-baked or machine-baked, is pierced through with small holes and marked with baked stripes, done so the dough cannot rise and bakes through evenly. Teachers in the Messianic and evangelical stream, including Chuck Missler and Rabbi Jason Sobel, read the pierced, striped loaf against Isaiah 53:5, “with his stripes we are healed,” and against the piercing of Zechariah 12:10 and John 19:37.
Held honestly
This is a modern reading of a modern loaf’s baking method, not a claim about what unleavened bread looked like or meant at Sinai. No rabbinic source assigns this meaning to the bread, and no biblical text describes the loaf’s appearance at all. The page names the teaching, and names who teaches it, without presenting it as a scriptural fact.
The Words Underneath
the Hebrew behind the feast, each a door to its full word study
The words underneath
matstsah: unleavened bread
Hebrew · H4682Strong's entry: properly, sweetness; concretely, sweet (i.e. not soured or bittered with yeast); specifically, an unfermented cake or loaf, or (elliptically) the festival of Passover (because no leaven was then used)
Matstsah, unleavened bread: plain flour-and-water dough baked too fast to rise. The word the feast is named for.
53 times in the Old Testament · matstsah, in full →
seor: leaven
Hebrew · H7603Strong's entry: barm or yeast-cake (as swelling by fermentation)
Seor, the leavening agent itself: old dough or starter, commanded put away, not only the finished loaf.
5 times in the Old Testament · seor, in full →
chamets: leaven
Hebrew · H2557Strong's entry: ferment, (figuratively) extortion
Chametz, the leavened product: what results once seor has worked through the dough, forbidden to be eaten.
11 times in the Old Testament · chamets, in full →
The Voices
the commentators quoted above, with the work named
Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
Ties the ordinance's own strictness to Paul's later reading of it, and gives 1 Corinthians 5:8 its fullest gloss on this page.
Commentary on the Bible (1832)
The short, exact gloss on “the bread of affliction.”
Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832-1869)
Points from the cut-off penalty straight to Jesus' own use of leaven as a figure, Matthew 16:6.
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)
Unpacks the haste behind Exodus 13:3's command.
Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755)
Draws the direct line from “keep the feast” to the Lord's Supper.
Among modern teachers, Chuck Missler taught the spring feasts as fulfilled at the first coming, Unleavened Bread named among them (Learn the Bible in 24 Hours), and Rabbi Jason Sobel reads the same calendar from inside its Jewish setting in Aligning with God’s Appointed Times.
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