Chag HaMatzot, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, begins the day after Pesach and lasts seven days. For seven days, no chametz (leaven) is found in the house. It is removed, searched out, burned. The Hebrew word matzah refers to the unleavened bread itself: flat, unrisen, baked in haste because there was no time to let the dough rise when Israel fled Egypt. Matzah is the bread of affliction (Deuteronomy 16:3) and the bread of freedom at the same time. You eat what slaves ate and remember that HaShem made you free.

Leaven in Scripture consistently represents sin, corruption, and the slow spread of what is impure. Yeshua warned His disciples about the "leaven of the Pharisees" (Matthew 16:6). Sha'ul told the Corinthians to "clean out the old leaven" and keep the feast "with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). Notice what Sha'ul said: keep the feast. He was writing to Gentile believers in Corinth and telling them to observe Chag HaMatzot. Not metaphorically. He used the feast as the framework for sanctification: remove what corrupts, live in what is pure, and do it for seven days because the process of purification is not instantaneous.

The KJV, ESV, NASB, and NIV mention unleavened bread in the Exodus narrative and in the Gospels' Last Supper accounts, but they never connect it to the ongoing feast that Sha'ul expected believers to keep. The English reader sees a historical detail. The Hebrew reader sees a seven-day annual practice of searching your house, and your life, for what has risen where it should not have. The physical act of removing chametz from your kitchen is a rehearsal of removing sin from your life. You go through every cabinet. You check every corner. That is the feast. It is not a metaphor for something spiritual. It is a physical act that trains you in the spiritual discipline of honest self-examination.