Happy Last Day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread

Days of Unleavened BreadHag HaMatzot or the Feast of Unleavened Bread is the second annual festival on YHVH’s biblical calendar, and occurs on the fifteenth day of the month of the Abib, which is the day immediately following Passover (or Pesach, Lev 23:5–8). Because both of these occur back-to-back, the Jews often refer to Passover and Unleavened Bread simply as Passover Week or some similar term that places the main emphasis on the Passover. But it must be noted that, though related, these two festivals are separate in meaning and purpose. Passover pictures Israel coming out of Egypt. Upon separating from Egypt, YHVH (the LORD) then commanded the Israelites to put all leavened food products out of their houses and to eat unleavened bread (flat bread) for seven days, hence the origins of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Additionally, the first and seventh days of this week-long event are Sabbaths, and YHVH commanded his people to hold a set-apart convocation (or gathering) on these Sabbaths.

What, you may ask, is the purpose of putting leavening out of one’s home and eating unleavened bread products such as matzoh for one week? This seems like a curious request by YHVH of his people. Not surprisingly, the Creator of the universe has a reason for everything. The spiritual implications are enlightening and highly relevant to the disciples of Yeshua. In commanding his people to deleaven their homes and lives, YHVH was/is teaching us an object lesson, which applies to us as much today as to the Israelites of long ago. 

Eating unleavened bread for seven days is a memorial, remembrance or reminder (Exod 13:6–9) of our coming out of our own spiritual Egypt. But how did unleavened bread enter into this picture? The Torah tells us that the Israelites left Egypt early in the morning as they were making their daily bread, and because they left in haste the bread was not able to rise (Exod 12:34). Therefore, they were forced, by circumstances, to leave their leavening or sin behind in Egypt, so to speak. Similarly, believers in Yeshua are commanded to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (1 Cor 5:6–8), which helps to remind us that we should have left our old sinful ways behind us in Egypt when we surrendered our lives to Yeshua. We are pressing onward to the Promised Land or eternal kingdom of YHVH Elohim.

Not only did YHVH command his set-apart people to leave Egypt (a picture of this world and its godless ways), but he wanted his people to separate from and leave behind in Egypt the rudiments of this world, or sin, which defiles them and separates them from a set-apart and sinless Elohim (God). Leaven is a picture of this, as we will see more clearly below.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread was the next step in YHVH’s plan of redemption for his people. Israel had just left Egypt and we know that Egypt is biblically a spiritual metaphor for the world and Satan. It may be easy to get out of Egypt, but now begins the arduous process of getting the sin or spiritual leaven of Egypt out us! The old sin habits die hard and often lie hidden in our lives waiting to be exposed and cast out from the recesses of our mind, will and emotions—or one’s spiritual house. This is not an easy process, and is not unlike ridding our physical homes of leavening products, such as bread crumbs, that find their way into the nooks and crannies of our homes. Throughout Scripture, leavening usually represents sin, pride, hypocrisy, malice, bitterness and false religious doctrine (Pss 71:4; 73:21; Hos 7:4; Matt 16:6; Mark 8:15; Luke 12:1; 1 Cor 5:8–6; Gal 5:9).

The Feast of Unleavened Bread lasts seven days. Seven in YHVH’s spiritual economy represents completion or perfection. YHVH has given man 7000 years on this earth to get rid of sin completely and totally in preparation for admission into his eternal kingdom as revealed in Revelation 21 and 22. For 6000 years, YHVH has left men on this earth to their own sinful devices. The seventh thousand-year time period, called the Messianic Age or Millennium (Rev 20:2, 3, 4, 6), will be different than the previous 6000 years, for during this time Yeshua will be ruling over the earth with a rod of iron as King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 2:27; 12:5; 19:15; 17:14; 19:16), Satan will be bound in the pit (Rev 20:2–3). All humans on earth will be taught the Torah-truth of YHVH Elohim without the evil influences of the devil and the world as we know it today. During the Messianic Age, the earth will be at peace and rest, men will be taught to love YHVH with all their heart, mind and strength and their neighbor as themselves. This time of relative peace and rest is the seventh thousand-year time period of man’s tenure on this earth, which corresponds to the seventh day of the week—the Sabbath. It will be a Sabbath of rest and peace on this earth for 1000 years. The Days of Unleavened Bread picture this, for the first day is a Sabbath representing the first Sabbath when YHVH rested after creating a perfect, paradisiacal and sin-free world. The last day or seventh day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is also a Sabbath, which corresponds prophetically to the Messianic Age.

The children of Israel left Egypt on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in an de-leavened state. What is the spiritual lesson in this for us? On an individual level, once a person has placed their faith in Yeshua, the Lamb of Elohim, and has been spared from sin’s death judgment, one then must leave spiritual Egypt and begin a trek through the wilderness of life en route to the spiritual “rest” of Yeshua’s eternal and spiritual kingdom (Heb 4:1–11). At that time, a person must take on the spiritual “yoke” of Yeshua, which is light and easy (Matt 11:28–30). As a result of turning one’s back on Pharaoh (a spiritual type of the devil) and Egypt (a spiritual type of this world), one must choose to follow Yeshua who is their new spiritual Master. As the children of Israel chose to follow YHVH Elohim (Exod 19:8; 24:3–7), the redeemed believer must likewise choose to follow Yeshua, which involves eradicating sin (the violation of YHVH’s commandments, 1 John 3:4) from one’s life, loving him and keeping his Torah-commandments (John 14:15). This process is how one de-leavens his or her life. As the sin is removed, a person will begin to experience the “joy of YHVH” (Neh 8:10; John 16:24; Rom 5:11) and the peace or shalom of YHVH that surpasses all understanding (Phil 4:7) as freedom from sin and the guilt and shame it brings occurs. This step in a redeemed believer’s life corresponds to the first day or Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Following day one of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, there are five regular work days before the final seventh day of Unleavened Bread, which is a Sabbath. These five days are a picture of the Israelites’ trek through the wilderness en route to the Promised Land. For the redeemed believer, it is a picture of life in general, which is a like a spiritual wilderness that one must traverse before attaining the goal and the reward of one’s spiritual inheritance or the spiritual Promised Land of YHVH’s eternal kingdom. In this life, a believer must do his best to live a sin-free life, which is like eating the “bread of affliction” or unleavened bread (Deut 16:3). Yeshua instructs us that his disciples, though in the world, they are not of this world, and that the world would hate and persecute them when they follow him (John 17). Being faithful to Yeshua, keeping his commands and not sinning will bring persecution and affliction, but the rewards to follow for those who overcome the world are worth the rigors of the journey!

The Apostle Paul refers to this process when he talks about “working out one’s own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), his struggles to defeat the carnal man (Rom 7), to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, and to enter into a life dominated by the Spirit of Yeshua the Messiah (Rom 8:1–2). Yeshua also talked about the persecution and tribulation that his disciples would have to endure to enter the ultimate rest of his kingdom (Matt 5:10–12). Paul said that all who live godly will suffer persecution (2  Tim 3:12), and that the spiritual metal of our lives must be tested and purified by the fire of trial (1 Cor 3:12–13). James says that we are to count it all joy when we are tried or proven (Jas 1:12). Will the fires of persecution separate us from the love of Yeshua, Paul asks the Romans (Rom 8:35)? During this journey, which is arduous at times, will we forget our first love as the Ephesians did (Rev 2:4), and lose faith and long for the delicacies of Egypt as the Israelites did when they fell into doubt and unbelief and perished in the wilderness (Heb 3:8–19)? Or will we persevere and overcome the world as Yeshua, the Author and Finisher of our faith, did (John 16:33) to be granted entrance into the Promised Land? For us to receive this reward, we must bring down the walls of our spiritual Jericho—the sin strongholds of our lives. Only then will we receive the rewards of the Kingdom of Elohim (Matt 5:10, 12; 1 John 5:4; Rev 2:7, 17; 3:5, 12, 21; 21:7). We are to resist sin (leavening) in our lives even to the point of paying the ultimate price, if necessary, as did Yeshua (Heb 12:1–4) and many of the biblical prophets (Heb 11).

This is the wilderness walk to which the servants of YHVH have been called. Like the Israelites, we must press on in faith for the hope that is set before us (Heb 6:18), the hope of eternal rest in the Promised Land of the kingdom of Elohim. This is what the last Sabbath or seventh day of the Days of Unleavened Bread represents.

Yes, we are saved or redeemed out of spiritual Egypt at the time of our conversion and have passed from death and condemnation to everlasting life (John 5:24), but salvation and sanctification (being set-apart from the world, flesh and the devil for service to YHVH) are also a lifelong process, which will culminate in the transforming of our mortal bodies into glorious and spiritual bodies at the resurrection. At this point in time we will have arrived at the completion or perfection of our hope the number seven epitomizes in the Scriptures.

 

5 thoughts on “Happy Last Day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread

  1. I have heard the statement made that the bread of the Presence or The Showbread was unleavened. Yet no one can show me the reference where it states this in the Torah. If that is truly the case, that it is “Matzoth”, what is keeping a person from connecting or associating the “Bread of Presence” (Exo 25:30) with the “Bread of Affliction?” (Deut 16:3)

    Yet the Fellowship offering in Lev 7:13 is leavened and it too is eaten, and never burned.

    Likewise the Bread of the Presence was always eaten and never burned.

    The Torah does not indicate anywhere that the bread of the Presence, was made without leaven, (but rabbinic tradition does) anymore than it states that a rope was tied around the high priest’s ankle on Yom Kippur (more rabbinic tradition, this hailing from the Zohar), even the Testimony of Yeshua calls the Bread of the Presence by the Greek word for leavened bread. (Mt 12:4).

    Even our brother Judah admits that it is not indicated the Bread of the Presence is made without leaven.

    I know that we discussed the “good leaven” this past Friday. It would seem that most of scripture that refers to Matzoh is in connection primarily with the feast of Unleavened bread, the same with chametz and seor, and with offerings that are burned on the altar.

    The prophet Ezekiel calls the seven days the Passover : Eze 45:21 “In the first month(ital), on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall observe the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread shall be eaten. Yet in Exo 23:15 it is simply called the Feast of Unleavened bread.

    • I assume that your conversation about “good leaven” was in reference to Luke 13:21?

      21 It is (5748) like leaven , which a woman took (5631) and hid (5656) in three measures of meal , till the whole was leavened (5681).

      Usually people claim that this “good leaven” represents the Good News overtaking the entire world, but the other parables disagree.
      The parable of the tares, the sower, the clean/unclean fish and others indicate a small harvest. In fact the conclusion drawn from the leaven parable is:

      “Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, 24 Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”

      Did Yeshua use a woman figure to spread the Good News? Why were the apostles all men?

      Seems to me this woman perhaps ‘snatched’ the leaven instead of just ‘took’ it.

      1c2) of that which when taken is not let go, to seize, to lay hold of, apprehend
      1c3) to take by craft (our catch, used of hunters, fisherman, etc.), to circumvent one by fraud
      1c4) to take to one’s self, lay hold upon, take possession of, i.e. to appropriate to one’s self
      1c5) catch at, reach after, strive to obtain

      And why did she hide it? Wouldnt that be a covert action? Couldnt she be the great Whore?

      As for the show bread: Because there are four places where the KJV uses “shewbread” (a.k.a. “showbread” or better yet “show bread”) where the Greek word is still “artos” or ordinary bread, I decided to see if show bread is ever referred to as unleavened—Scripturally. Of the 18 chapters in the Hebrew Scriptures where “show bread” is used, only one of them also contains the word “unleavened”, and this reference distinguishes “show bread” from “unleavened wafers”—wafers being defined as “thin cakes”: 1 Chronicles 23:29.

  2. Hey Lon, try this for an explanation of the good leaven: In Matthew’s account, the good leaven = the word of the kingdom of heaven meaning that the kingdom of heaven will spread and cover the earth. The gospel message is that which propels the message forward, but this doesn’t presuppose that all people will heed it. Regardless, the kingdom will cover the earth, and those who fail to heed it will be cast into the lake of fire. As I explain in my Bible commentary:

    Matthew 13:33 (and Luke 13:21) This parable is the only positive reference to leavening in the Scriptures. What is the explanation of this? Earlier in this chapter, Yeshua gives the Parable of the Sower and likens the good seed to the “word of the kingdom (v. 19), which when sowed on the good ground of those who receives the message of the kingdom yields a bountiful harvest—some a hundred fold, some sixty and some thirty (v. 23). This is why Yeshua likened the kingdom of heaven to leaven, since leaven when introduced into bread dough spreads and causes the dough to expand. Even so, when the word of YHVH’s kingdom is placed in the hearts of men, it spreads and expands until it thoroughly permeates the lives of men. Eventually, YHVH’s kingdom will cover the whole earth. The good leaven of the leaven of the word of YHVH’s kingdom must be contrasted with the bad leaven of sin, hypocrisy, pride, insincerity, bitterness and false teachings, which also spread rapidly in opposition to the kingdom of Elohim.

  3. Jonatan—I just assumed that the 12 loaves of the bread of the presence of Elohim were unleavened as well.

    You are correct about the Scriptures not stating this. Interestingly, it is early Jewish that they were (see Josephus Ant. iii.6.6 [143]).

    I guess there’s no reason they couldn’t have been leavened as were the two loaves offered on Shavuot, and the bread of the peace offering (Lev 7:13).

    To be sure, no leavened bread touched the altar of sacrifice, since this would have violated the picture of Yeshua being the sin-free/unleveaned bread sin offering.

  4. I can think of one chapter that uses ordinary leavened bread as a symbol of great good. Artos (bread) is used I believe 97 times for ordinary bread:

    Joh 6:33 For the bread [artos] of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
    Joh 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
    Joh 6:48 I am that bread of life.
    Joh 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

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