Flat Bread, A Flattened Egypt and Flattened Pride

Exodus 13:3, Went out of Egypt…no leavened bread. What is the spiritual connection between coming out of Egypt and the memorial (v. 9) of eating unleavened flat bread? The keeping of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the command to eat flat bread was to be an object lesson for successive generations Israelites as a sign and a memorial of what YHVH did against Egypt and of Israel’s deliverance (vv. 8–9).

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As the strong right arm of YHVH’s judgments (v. 3) pressed down upon proud and exalted Egypt until it was flattened as a nation, even so, YHVH’s judgment against the sin and idolatry in our lives demands that we become flattened, deleavened and contrite before him. He desires to squeeze or press out of us all the leaven of sin and pride that we have inherited from spiritual Egypt.

In the Scriptures, since leavening puffs up and sours bread, it is a biblical metaphor for sin, which does the same to the human heart and mind. It causes bitterness, pride, insincerity, hypocrisy and giving rise to false teachings and doctrines of men. We must put out the leaven of sin from our lives and from our spiritual assemblies, as Paul admonishes.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread pictures this process. The saints are to keep the feast not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (i.e., the Torah, 1 Cor 5:8, read vv. 1–11 for context).

 

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