Feast of Unleavened Bread

The Feast of Unleavened Bread (Hebrew Hag ha-Matzot) runs from 15 to 21 Nisan, the seven days immediately following Passover, and the two are often spoken of together as a single eight-day season (Luke 22:1). The defining sign is the absence of leaven: every Israelite household must, on the day before the festival begins, search out and remove all leaven (chametz) and any leavened bread, eating only matzah — flat, unleavened cakes — for the full week. The first and seventh days are sacred assemblies on which no ordinary work may be done (Lev 23:6–8). The festival memorializes the Exodus, when Israel left Egypt in such haste that the dough they carried on their shoulders had no time to rise (Exo 12:34). In rabbinic and Pauline thought, leaven becomes a moral image of pervasive corruption that must be purged so the household is clean before God; Paul applies this directly to the church in 1 Corinthians 5:7–8: "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."