Exodus 12:15-17
Amplified Bible
15 [In the celebration of the Passover in future years,] seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the [a]leaven from your houses [because it represents the spread of sin]; for whoever eats leavened bread on the first day through the seventh day, that person shall be cut off and excluded from [the atonement made for] Israel. 16 On the first day [of the feast] you shall have a holy and solemn assembly, and on the seventh day there shall be another holy and solemn assembly; no work of any kind shall be done on those days, except for the preparation of food which every person must eat—only that may be done by you. 17 You shall also observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very day I brought your hosts [grouped according to tribal armies] out of the land of Egypt; therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an ordinance forever.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Exodus 12:15 This is the first time leaven is mentioned in the Bible. The Hebrew word (seor) refers specifically to the leavening agent (as opposed to dough containing it), which today is thought of as yeast, a type of fungus. In Jewish thinking, leaven was symbolic of impurity and corruption. As leaven spreads through dough, sin spreads through a population. Jesus used it as a symbol for the corrupt and hypocritical teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees (see especially Luke 12:1; cf Matt 16:11; Mark 8:15), but He also used leaven’s ability to permeate a mass of dough many times its own size as an illustration of the spread of the kingdom of heaven (Matt 13:33; Luke 13:21).
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