Leaven is an often repeated and important subject in the Bible. So much so that one of the most important feasts in the Old Testament is called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The point is that leaven, for some reason, is important to God. And if it’s important to God, it ought to be important to us. We should seek to understand:
What does leaven mean in the Bible and what does it mean for us today?
What is leaven?
In baking, bread is often soft. This is because some sort of leavening was added to the dough. Leavening is some substance which rises the dough. Today there are many substances which are used as leavening agents, including yeast, baking soda and many others. If a bread is soft and the dough has risen, then we say call it leavened bread. If it has not risen then we call it unleavened bread.
Unleavened bread is often made in haste
The first mention that I can find of leaven in the Bible is in Genesis 19:3. Lot invites 2 guests into his home and he bakes unleavened bread for them. In fact, do a quick concordance search of unleavened bread in the Bible and you’ll see that many of the mentions are in the context of a host quickly baking bread for a guest.
We must remember that for most of human history, people did not have refrigerators and preservatives. So people could not store bread for more than a few days, or it would start to go bad. Furthermore, if you’ve ever baked bread before you’ll see that it takes time for dough to rise. If you have a guest waiting for you to bake bread, you’re not a very good host if you make them wait an extra hour or so for the bread to rise. Consider also 1 Samuel 24:24, another scene where a host hastily prepares a meal for their guest.
Then, of course, we should notice the haste that is displayed when the Feast of Unleavened Bread was first instituted in Exodus 12:3-17. In verse 8 we can see a very tense moment. God is sending the 10th plague upon Egypt, and He is giving very specific instructions. Whoever follows these instructions will be spared, but whoever doesn’t, their firstborn son will be killed. And the very next day, Israel is leaving Egypt. The point is we don’t have time to wait for preparing this feast, because tomorrow we are outta here!
Unleavened bread in remembrance of the Exodus
To this day