---
title: "Unleavened Bread: A New Lump"
category: "feasts"
description: "The seven days after Passover, when Israel ate bread without leaven and cleared every trace of it from their houses. What the feast remembered, what leaven does and does not picture in Scripture, and how Paul applies the feast to a church that Christ's sacrifice has already made unleavened."
tags: ["exodus", "leviticus", "1-corinthians", "passover", "sanctification", "method/typology", "method/word-study", "lang/hebrew", "lang/greek"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Leviticus 23:6-8; Exodus 12:15-20; 1 Corinthians 5:6-8"
bible_references: ["Exodus 12:15-20", "Exodus 12:34", "Exodus 12:39", "Exodus 13:3-10", "Deuteronomy 16:3-4", "Numbers 28:17-25", "Leviticus 2:11", "Leviticus 7:13", "Leviticus 23:17", "Luke 22:1", "Acts 12:3", "Acts 20:6", "Matthew 13:33", "Luke 13:21", "Matthew 16:6-12", "Mark 8:15", "Luke 12:1", "Galatians 5:2-3", "Galatians 5:7-9", "1 Corinthians 5:1-13", "1 Corinthians 6:11", "2 Corinthians 1:12", "2 Corinthians 5:21", "1 Peter 2:22", "Hebrews 4:15", "Acts 2:27", "Psalm 16:10", "Leviticus 23:11"]
date_created: 2026-10-02
date_modified: 2026-10-31
ai_provider_models:
- anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---
# Unleavened Bread: A New Lump
{ align=right width="96" }
Israel left Egypt with dough that had no time to rise. "They baked unleavened cakes of the dough that
they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and
could not wait" (Exodus 12:39, ESV). God made that night's bread a feast, and kept it for seven days
every year.
**In one sentence:** Unleavened Bread followed Passover for seven days, remembering that God brought
Israel out of Egypt in haste and made them clear the old leaven from their houses; Paul applies it to
the church, which Christ's sacrifice as our Passover has already made unleavened, so you keep the feast
by clearing out the old leaven of malice and evil and living in sincerity and truth.
> ✝️ Leviticus 23:6-8 (ESV)
>
> 6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; for
> seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 7 On the first day you shall have a holy convocation;
> you shall not do any ordinary work. 8 But you shall present a food offering to the LORD for seven
> days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work."
## Key Takeaways
*(This section follows the [Key Takeaways](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/key-takeaways/) format — see that page for what each part is for.)*
### Types & Prophecy
- **Applied by the New Testament.** Paul reads the feast as the life of the redeemed: "Cleanse out the
old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb,
has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7, ESV).
- **Christ the sinless one, inferred.** Many read the unleavened bread as a picture of Christ, who
"committed no sin" (1 Peter 2:22, ESV). The New Testament never calls Him unleavened bread, so hold
it as an illustration.
### Lessons about Jesus
- **He warned His disciples about leaven.** "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is
hypocrisy" (Luke 12:1, ESV).
- **He is without sin.** He was "tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15, ESV), and God
"made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2
Corinthians 5:21, ESV).
- **He made His people unleavened.** "You really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has
been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7, ESV).
### Memory verses
> ✝️ 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (ESV)
>
> 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ,
> our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old
> leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
### Be Transformed
- **Think.** In Christ you are already "a new lump" (1 Corinthians 5:7, ESV). Holiness is becoming
what His sacrifice has made you.
- **Attitude.** Take small sin seriously. "A little leaven leavens the whole lump" (Galatians 5:9,
ESV).
- **Do.** Israel searched the house and put the leaven out (Exodus 12:15). This week, name one old
habit of malice, resentment or deceit, confess it to God, and remove what feeds it, so that you
keep the feast "with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:8, ESV).
### Prayer
Father, you brought your people out of Egypt in haste and fed them bread without leaven. Thank you
that your Son Jesus, our Passover lamb, was sacrificed for us, and that in Him you have made us a new
lump. Search our hearts as Israel searched their houses. Clear out the old leaven of malice and evil,
and keep us in sincerity and truth, so that the whole lump is yours.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
## Study outline
- [The feast](#the-feast). Seven days after Passover, what Israel ate, removed and remembered.
- [The words](#the-words). The Hebrew and Greek for leaven and unleavened bread.
- [What leaven pictures](#what-leaven-pictures). Leaven forbidden and leaven offered, and why the
New Testament uses it for what spreads.
- [Paul's festival: 1 Corinthians 5](#pauls-festival-1-corinthians-5). Redemption first, holiness
following.
- [Christ and the unleavened bread](#christ-and-the-unleavened-bread). What is stated, and what is
inferred.
- [Discussion questions](#discussion-questions). Six, for a group or on your own.
## The feast
Unleavened Bread began the day after Passover, "on the fifteenth day of the same month", and ran for
seven days (Leviticus 23:6, ESV). The first and seventh days were holy convocations with no ordinary
work, and offerings were made every day (Leviticus 23:7-8). Numbers adds a daily sin offering, "one
male goat for a sin offering, to make atonement for you" (Numbers 28:22, ESV).
The two feasts ran together so closely that the New Testament can use either name for both: "Now the
Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover" (Luke 22:1, ESV). Luke dates
Peter's arrest and Paul's sailing by them (Acts 12:3; 20:6).
Three commands shaped the week:
- **Eat unleavened bread.** It was "the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in
haste" (Deuteronomy 16:3, ESV).
- **Remove the leaven.** "On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses ... For seven
days no leaven is to be found in your houses" (Exodus 12:15, 19, ESV). The penalty for eating it
was severe: "that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner
or a native of the land" (Exodus 12:19, ESV).
- **Tell your son.** "You shall tell your son on that day, 'It is because of what the LORD did for me
when I came out of Egypt'" (Exodus 13:8, ESV).
The feast remembered a rescue: "for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt"
(Exodus 12:17, ESV). **This shows that God wanted His redeemed people to remember, every year, that
He had taken them out of slavery, and to live as a people set apart.**
## The words
- מַצָּה (*matstsah*, H4682) is unleavened bread, flat bread baked without
rising. It occurs fifty-three times.
- שְׂאֹר (*seʾor*, H7603) is leaven itself: a lump of fermented dough kept back
to raise the next batch. It occurs five times, all in laws (Exodus 12:15, 19; 13:7; Leviticus 2:11;
Deuteronomy 16:4). The ESV Study Bible notes on 1 Corinthians 5:6 that ancient leaven was fermented
dough of this kind, carried from batch to batch.
- חָמֵץ (*chamets*, H2557) is anything leavened.
- "Remove" in Exodus 12:15 is תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ, from
שָׁבַת (*shavat*, H7673), the verb behind "Sabbath": make the leaven cease.
- In Greek, ζύμη (*zymē*, G2219) is leaven, thirteen times in the New Testament, and ἄζυμος (*azymos*,
G106) is unleavened, nine times.
## What leaven pictures
### Not sin in itself
Leaven is not evil in Scripture by nature. The law banned it from the altar: "No grain offering that
you bring to the LORD shall be made with leaven" (Leviticus 2:11, ESV). Yet the law also required it.
The thanksgiving offering came "with loaves of leavened bread" (Leviticus 7:13, ESV), and at the Feast
of Weeks Israel waved two loaves "baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the LORD" (Leviticus 23:17,
ESV). Jesus Himself said, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three
measures of flour, till it was all leavened" (Matthew 13:33, ESV). The ESV Study Bible observes that
leaven usually carries a negative sense in Scripture, and that here Jesus uses it for the kingdom's
hidden, spreading growth.
### What spreads
What leaven does is spread through the whole. That is why the New Testament uses it as a warning:
- **The Pharisees' and Sadducees' teaching.** "He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread,
but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees" (Matthew 16:12, ESV).
- **Hypocrisy.** "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy" (Luke 12:1, ESV).
- **Herod.** "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod" (Mark 8:15, ESV).
- **False teaching in the church.** To the Galatians, pressed to add circumcision to the gospel
(Galatians 5:2-3):
"A little leaven leavens the whole lump" (Galatians 5:9, ESV).
- **Tolerated sin in the church.** The same proverb in 1 Corinthians 5:6.
So the picture is a small thing that changes everything it touches. In the feast Israel put it out of
the house entirely for seven days, starting fresh with bread that had none of the old batch in it.
## Paul's festival: 1 Corinthians 5
The Corinthian church was tolerating a man living with his father's wife (1 Corinthians 5:1). "And
you are arrogant!" Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 5:2, ESV). He called for discipline, "Purge the evil
person from among you" (1 Corinthians 5:13, ESV), so that the man's "spirit may be saved in the day
of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 5:5, ESV). To make the case he reached for the feast:
> ✝️ 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 (ESV)
>
> 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse
> out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our
> Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old
> leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Paul says what they are before he says what to do: "as you really are unleavened"
uses ἐστε, a present indicative, "you are", and the command "cleanse out" rests on it. The reason is the sacrifice:
"For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." The same order runs through the calendar.
Passover came first, on the fourteenth, and Unleavened Bread followed on the fifteenth (Leviticus
23:5-6). Israel was redeemed by the lamb's blood and then lived as a people without leaven.
The doctrine is sanctification. Christians are already sanctified in Christ ("you were washed, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ", 1 Corinthians 6:11, ESV), and they are
called to grow into it. **This shows that God does the redeeming, and then calls the redeemed to live
as what He has made them.** Paul describes the whole Christian life as a feast: "Let us therefore
celebrate the festival." Its bread is "sincerity and truth", εἰλικρίνεια (*eilikrineia*, G1505), which
occurs three times in the New Testament, all in Paul's letters to Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:8; 2
Corinthians 1:12; 2:17).
## Christ and the unleavened bread
Many Christian teachers read the unleavened bread as a picture of Christ Himself: sinless, and
buried during the feast without His body seeing corruption (Acts 2:27, quoting Psalm 16:10). The parts of that picture are
true. He "committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:22, ESV), and He died
at Passover and lay in the tomb during Unleavened Bread. But no New Testament writer calls Jesus the
unleavened bread or links His burial to the feast. Paul's one use of the feast applies it to the
church. Hold the Christ-picture as an illustration, and build on what Paul says.
For where this feast sits among the others, see [The Appointed Times](https://the-way.lewy.au/feasts/feasts/). The feast that
comes before it is [Passover](https://the-way.lewy.au/feasts/passover/), and the sheaf waved "on the day after the Sabbath"
(Leviticus 23:11, ESV) is [Firstfruits](https://the-way.lewy.au/feasts/firstfruits/).
## Discussion questions
1. **The language.** "Remove leaven" in Exodus 12:15 uses the verb behind "Sabbath", to make
something cease. What does it add to think of the week as a Sabbath for leaven?
2. **The text in its context.** Leaven was banned from the altar (Leviticus 2:11) yet required in the
loaves of Weeks (Leviticus 23:17). What does that tell you about how to read leaven elsewhere?
3. **Christ.** Paul grounds "cleanse out the old leaven" in "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been
sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Why does the sacrifice come first?
4. **The hard part.** Jesus compared the kingdom to leaven (Matthew 13:33) and warned against the
leaven of the Pharisees (Matthew 16:6). How do you hold the two together?
5. **The church.** Paul applied the feast to a church tolerating sin (1 Corinthians 5:1-8). What would
it look like for a church to keep this feast today?
6. **Be transformed.** What is one "little leaven" in your life that you have treated as too small to
matter (Galatians 5:9)?
## References & Recommended Reading
- **ESV Study Bible** (Crossway) — verse text throughout; notes on Exodus 12:14-20, 12:15, Matthew
13:33 and 1 Corinthians 5:6-7.
- **NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible** (Zondervan) — notes on Exodus 12:15 and 1 Corinthians 5:7.
- **NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible** (Zondervan) — note on 1 Corinthians 5:7.
- **Macula Hebrew (WLC)** and **Macula Greek (SBLGNT)** — occurrence data for מַצָּה, שְׂאֹר, חָמֵץ,
ζύμη, ἄζυμος and εἰλικρίνεια; unfoldingWord ULT interlinear for Exodus 12:15 and 1 Corinthians
5:7.
### On this site
- [The Appointed Times](https://the-way.lewy.au/feasts/feasts/) — the seven feasts of Leviticus 23.
- [Where Two or Three Are Gathered](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/where-two-or-three-are-gathered/) — church
discipline, the setting of 1 Corinthians 5.