The Days of Releavened Bread

By Nathaniel Burson – 4/17/2023

Israel was commanded to keep seven days of unleavened bread, during which they were neither to eat, nor possess, leavened bread (Exodus 12:15-20, Deuteronomy 16:3-4, etc.). 

But Israel did not have access to supermarkets to rush out after sundown and buy baking soda, baking powder, and instant dry yeast as there were no such things until less than 200 years ago; not to mention, no supermarkets. 

So the process of getting leaven again required them to make a sourdough starter from scratch. This cannot, simply cannot, be done quickly. First, you take water and flour and expose it to air; the wild yeasts in the air find it, colonize it, sour it. 

The next day you take that substance – the beginnings of the new leaven – and throw 1/2 of it away, and feed it by adding more water and flour. Repeat each day, and according to several non-Christian, non-Biblical sources, it takes…wait for it… seven days to make a new culture!

It varies with temperature, but it cannot be done in a day or two. The process of colonizing, feeding, and isolating the good bacteria to make a sourdough starter requires significant time before you can bake your first loaf. 

Which means if Israel had waited until the end of the days of unleavened bread to begin this process, then they would have had TWO weeks of unleavened bread, as it would not have been possible to bake or eat bread with leaven until their starter was finished!

This means they must have started it during, or before, the days of unleavened bread. Does this contradict the statement “for seven days, there shall no leaven be seen in your coasts”? Fair question, but here’s another. Can you ever truly get leaven out of your home?

Leaven is water, flour, and yeast spores in the air. All of these are in your home all the time, whether you like it or not. You simply cannot remove yeast from the air. Thus there is never a time when your home is truly unleavened. 

But likewise, it’s not possible to create leavened bread, except in the most technical sense, with a 2-day-old-starter culture. Your best efforts would still result in hard, brick-like “bread of affliction”. Until the starter has multiplied and grown, it cannot be used to leaven bread properly. 

So when God said “no leaven”, did He mean all leaven, including new, young leaven starter – which you had no intention of baking, nor could it be baked into proper leavened bread if you wanted to – or was He specifically talking about the old leaven?

1 Corinthians 5:7 Purge out therefore the OLD leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

What God specifically commanded you not to have in your homes for that week was the old leaven. He said nothing about the NEW leaven being purged from your home! Because the purpose of that week was to CREATE a new leaven that would last for the next year!

NEW LUMP

From this science, I conclude that Israel must have begun their new starter culture – and, therefore, thrown out their old one – on the afternoon following the Passover. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing they should be doing on the first holy day. 

And if they had waited until after the first holy day, they would have had only 5 days to make the culture. So in order to make the science of bread match the concept of the holy days, it would need to be begun late afternoon, just as Jesus was being placed in the tomb. 

Reading 1 Corinthians 5:7 again, the connections here seem to be about throwing out the old leaven and making a new one immediately; and the reference to the Passover suggests it was happening at the same time Jesus was being killed. 

Verse 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth.

This also seems to contrast getting rid of the old leaven, with beginning the new lump immediately (at that moment, still unleavened). But this lump, no matter how they tried, could not have stayed unleavened. Because, as I said above, there are yeasts in the air at all times.

So if you leave a lump of unleavened bread – which is to say, flour, water, and maybe salt – out in the air, a small amount of yeast will find it. If you knead it, let it set longer, then reserve a piece and bake the rest, you would gradually get a “new lump” which gradually would become filled with “new leaven” from the wild yeasts of the area. 

So rather than consciously making a starter culture, and then adding that to bread, as is commonly done, they might have simply made unleavened bread… until gradually, that unleavened bread became leavened by the end of the feast. 

Just as it is the purpose of this seven-thousand-year period to do the same with the saints – to gradually leaven the ekklesiawith the spirit of God, until the fire comes and tests/bakes them at the end times to see if they will remain. 

Incidentally, many people erroneously believe that leaven represents sin. This is flatly refuted by Matthew 13:33, but is widely believed regardless. For more proof that it does not represent sin, but rather spirit in general, including God’s own spirit, read my article on “The Leaven of Righteousness”.

KILLING YOUR STARTER

Typically, when bread is baked, you stir all of your leaven into the dough you’re going to bake, then let it rise (release CO2, or spirit), then knead the dough to move the yeasts throughout the lump (stir up the spirit), then rise again to put spirit in every part of the dough. 

Verse 6 …Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

Luke 13:20-21 And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

This takes about 12-24 hours – one day – to do properly. Longer is better, to a point. Then you form it into individual loaves, let them rise one last time, and bake them – reserving back a fist-sized lump to start your next batch of bread. 

But because Israel left Egypt in haste, they did not wait for their bread to rise, nor did they bother to preserve a starter for the next batch, because they knew they wouldn’t be coming back… so they baked all of their bread, the starter included, thus killing their old starter. They discarded nothing – they simply killed their starter. 

Under ordinary circumstances, there is no scientific reason why a starter culture should ever be thrown away. It doesn’t die or go bad; as long as you feed it and work it regularly, it is effectively immortal. So why – aside from purely symbolic reasons – did God want them to do so every year?

In every region of the world, from the driest desert to wettest jungle, there are yeasts present in the air at all times; so if you put “yeast food” in an area exposed to airflow, these “friendly spirits” will come and eat of your offering and inhabit your lump of dough. 

Of course, not all spirits are equal; some are tasty and sweet, some pleasantly sour, some are downright unholy and putrid. This is why San Francisco sourdough is so famous – because those particular yeasts are unusually pleasant-tasting. 

But here’s the thing – if you take a San Francisco starter to, say, Texas, and make bread with it, it will taste like the original at first. But over the course of months, the local yeasts will gradually colonize, change, and overwhelm it. 

And after 6 months, it will no longer taste like San Francisco sourdough at all; because the local leaven will have influenced it, changed it, into a new product. Maybe better, maybe worse, but different. And so if you wanted to have that same sourdough taste again, you’d have to purge out the old lump, and go back to San Francisco to get a new sample of the good stuff!

THE LEAVEN OF JERUSALEM

So when all Israel went up to Jerusalem for the days of Unleavened Bread (Luke 2:41, Deuteronomy 16:16, etc.), before leaving their homes to walk for days, they first baked all their bread – including their starter. They could even have baked leavened bread, as the journey took many days for some of them (Luke 2:42-46).

Regardless, all leaven would have been discarded and consumed before arrival in Jerusalem. And so if they started a new sourdough starter after Passover, they would have HAD to do so… in Jerusalem! Thus, all bread in Israel would be Jerusalem sourdough!

Which means next year’s lumps of dough, throughout the entire nation of Israel, or anywhere that people worshipped the true God – from Egypt to Babylon – would have had their bread leavened with the native yeasts of the holy city of God (Acts 2:5-12).

This is why every year, three times a year, the males were to go back to Jerusalem to hear the law, to take it back to their local areas; so that whatever spirits influenced the wild places or synagogues where they lived, there would be a steady influx of the good spirit to keep them grounded in the truth. 

In this way, the law would continually go forth from Jerusalem to remind all nations regularly that here was the true leaven. This is what the Bread of Life ACTUALLY tastes like, actually said. So that they could purge out the “other Jesuses” they had been hearing about and re-leaven their lump with the holy spirit. 

The wild yeasts change the truth so slowly, you might forget what the true sourdough taste was until you have the real thing again. Which is why God required everyone to start fresh every year, to throw out their customs and traditions and habits and get back to the true spirit of God by appearing before His house. 

And in Acts 2, when these very Jews from all nations returned home that year, it was with a “starter culture”, the earnest of the spirit of God given from Jerusalem. A spiritual culture they were to take home, stir into their own lumps, and keep alive for the coming year. 

Ephesians 1:13-14 …in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

A living bread that was begun on the day of Passover… when the True bread of life was killed, roasted in a metaphorical fire, His spirit given up… and as He was sealed in the tomb, a new spiritual bread was started. A new Leaven, to leaven the lump of the Earth, of which the whole Earth shall be overspread. 

Isaiah 11:9 …for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

As He gave up the spirit, the Father did not let it get burned away as the Israelites had, nor discarded as we do – for this spirit was holy, and so He kept it; so that He could not only put it into Jesus’ new body… but use it as a starter culture to convert every lump who believed on Him into a spirit just like Him. 

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 (Murdoch) Now the Lord himself is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with uncovered faces, behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord; and are transformed into the same likeness, from glory to glory, as by the Lord the Spirit.

So that in time, they, too, can leaven others with their own spirits, knowing that their spirits are of the exact same strain as His. 

That our lumps are holy, as His is holy.