What is Chag HaMatzot (the Feast of Unleavened Bread)?

Chag HaMatzot, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, begins on the fifteenth day of the first month, the day after Passover, and runs seven days (Leviticus 23:6-8). The first and last days are set-apart assemblies, days of rest. The command is twofold: remove all chametz (leaven) from your home, and eat matzah (unleavened bread) for the whole week. When Israel left Egypt they left in haste, with no time for their dough to rise, so unleavened bread is the bread of deliverance, the taste of a people leaving slavery in a hurry.

The meaning deepens when you ask what leaven pictures. Throughout Scripture leaven is the small thing that puffs up and spreads, an image of sin and pride working quietly through a whole life. Sha'ul (Paul) makes it explicit: Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, for Messiah, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed; let us keep the festival, not with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). Sweeping leaven from your house is a hands-and-knees parable: you are clearing the hidden corruption out of a redeemed life.

There is a Messianic note here too. Yeshua (Jesus), the sinless one, was buried during these very days, His body untouched by corruption. The matzah even carries the picture, pierced and striped in its baking, unleavened because there was no sin in Him. The feast that says put out the leaven is the feast that frames a body that had none.

If you grew up hearing these were just Jewish customs, hear what the text actually says: HaShem calls this His feast (Leviticus 23:6). Keeping it is not legalism; it is joining the housecleaning He commanded, inside and out.

How do you keep it, simply? In the days before, go through your home and clear out the chametz, the bread, the risen baked goods. Then for seven days eat matzah instead of leavened bread, and let each cracker remind you to ask what pride or sin needs sweeping out of your heart. Rest on the first and last days. Be Berean: read 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 with a piece of matzah in your hand, and let the bread preach to you.