The Jewish FeastsUnleavened Bread and Firstfruits
The Week That Follows the Passover Night
Leviticus 23 sets out the feasts of the LORD in the order of the year, and the first three fall within a single week of the first month. The passover lamb was killed on the fourteenth day at even. On the fifteenth the feast of unleavened bread began, and it lasted seven days. Within that same week, on the morrow after the sabbath, the priest waved before the LORD the first sheaf cut from the new harvest. The three are so closely bound that the Gospels can name the whole week by either title: Luke writes that "the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover" (Luke 22:1).
These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons. In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD'S passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.
Leviticus 23:4-6
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The Passover night has its own pages, and so does Pentecost, the feast at the end of the fifty days counted from the sheaf. The two feasts between them are the subject here. They cannot be understood apart from the Passover, and the New Testament names their fulfilment in two sentences of Paul. Because Christ our passover has been sacrificed, his people keep the feast of unleavened bread. Because Christ is risen, he is "the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20).
The Feast of Unleavened Bread
The command was given in Egypt, before the first Passover was kept, and it was given together with the Passover itself. For seven days, from the evening of the fourteenth to the evening of the one and twentieth, Israel was to eat unleavened bread1: bread that is sweet, not soured with yeast. On the first day every household was to put away leaven2 out of its houses, and whoever ate what was leavened during those days was cut off from Israel.
Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
Exodus 12:15
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The first day and the seventh were holy convocations, days without servile work, and on each of the seven days an offering made by fire went up to the LORD (Leviticus 23:7-8). The law reached the stranger as well as the one born in the land (Exodus 12:19). Once the LORD had chosen a place to put his name, the passover was to be killed there and the unleavened bread eaten with it (Deuteronomy 16:2).
Scripture gives the reason in the history itself. When Pharaoh at last let the people go, they left in a single night. They carried their dough before it was leavened, the kneadingtroughs bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders, and on the road they baked unleavened cakes "because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry" (Exodus 12:39). Every year afterwards the feast kept that haste alive. Moses called the unleavened loaf the bread of affliction, eaten so that Israel would remember the day it came out of Egypt all the days of its life.
Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.
Deuteronomy 16:3
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It was a feast for teaching. A house emptied of leaven was a question waiting to be asked, and the father's answer was to come from his own memory of redemption: "This is done because of that which the LORD did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt" (Exodus 13:8). Each generation ate the bread as though it had walked out of Egypt itself. For the night that began it all, see The Passover: The Angel of Death and the Blood of the Lamb.
What the Leaven Pictures
The first meaning of the command is haste, but Scripture does not leave leaven as a detail of the kitchen. No meat offering burnt on the altar could contain it (Leviticus 2:11). Leaven works quietly. A small piece hidden in a lump of dough passes through the whole until all of it is changed, and that is the property the Bible draws on. Because the image is about spreading, its meaning depends on what is spreading. In one parable the kingdom of heaven is the leaven, working through three measures of meal (Matthew 13:33; see The Parable of the Leaven). Far more often it is the spread of what corrupts.
Jesus warned his disciples to beware of "the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy" (Luke 12:1). On another day the disciples came to see that he meant "the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (Matthew 16:12). Paul uses the same proverb in two letters: "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 5:6). Hypocrisy, false teaching and tolerated sin all behave alike. Left alone, they do not stay small.
Christ Our Passover, and the Feast That Follows
The church at Corinth had tolerated a grievous sin within its own membership and was proud of itself while it did. Paul answered by walking them through Passover week. The Greek words he uses are the words of the feast: leaven3 to be purged out, and a people already unleavened4.
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: 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.
The order of Paul's sentences matters. He does not tell the Corinthians to purge out the leaven so that they may become unleavened. He tells them to purge it out because they are unleavened, and the ground he gives is a finished act: Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. In Israel's calendar the lamb was killed first and the week without leaven followed. Ambrosiaster (384) saw the same order in the verse: "The sacrifice comes first, and then it is possible to make the transition from the old life to the new." The feast does not buy the deliverance. It is the life of people already delivered.
John Chrysostom (407) noticed the verb Paul chose. He "said not, hath died, but more in point to the subject in hand, 'hath been sacrificed.'" Christ is named as the lamb of the feast, and the feast is therefore his people's to keep. Chrysostom also refused to let the old leaven shrink to the one offence at Corinth: "the old leaven" is "not fornication only, but also sin of every kind." Paul names its two strains as malice and wickedness. In their place is bread of sincerity5, a word whose plain sense is clearness or purity, joined to truth: a life with nothing hidden in it and nothing false.
The feast in Egypt lasted a week. Matthew Henry drew the line from the seven days to the whole of a believer's life: "The Jews, after they had killed the passover, kept the feast of unleavened bread. So must we; not for seven days only, but all our days." And again: "The whole life of a Christian must be a feast of unleavened bread." He did not set this up as a law laid on the unwilling. He wrote: "The sacrifice of our Redeemer is the strongest argument with a gracious heart for purity and sincerity."
The unleavened one
The feast also points to Christ himself. Tertullian (220) read the unleavened bread as "a figure of us (Christians)", and Paul's own words support that reading; but the people can be unleavened only because their Passover was. Peter says that Christ "did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:22). Hebrews calls him "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26), and Paul speaks of him "who knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21). No leaven of malice or pretence was ever in him, and so his sacrifice was accepted for those who had plenty of both. Many who read the feasts together also see the week of unleavened bread in his body laid in the tomb, for the psalm Peter preached at Pentecost promised, "neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). On the sinlessness of Christ, see The Sinless Nature of Christ.
The Sheaf of Firstfruits
Inside that same week came a second ordinance, given at Sinai but kept only later: "When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof" (Leviticus 23:10). At that season the barley ripened first. Before the first Passover, Exodus records, "the barley was in the ear" while the wheat was not yet grown up (Exodus 9:31-32), and Ruth came to Bethlehem "in the beginning of barley harvest" (Ruth 1:22). The first cutting of the new crop was brought to the priest before any of it was eaten.
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.
Two words carry the ordinance. The firstfruits6 is a word for what is first in place, time, order or rank. It is the word that opens the Bible, "In the beginning" (Genesis 1:1), and the word of the proverb, "Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase" (Proverbs 3:9). The sheaf7 is a heap or bundle of cut stalks, and the same word is the dry measure by which Israel gathered manna in the wilderness, "an omer for every man" (Exodus 16:16). The people who had gathered an omer of bread from heaven each morning would one day bring an omer from their own fields.
The priest waved the sheaf before the LORD "to be accepted for you". One sheaf stood for the whole people and the whole harvest, and with it went a he lamb without blemish for a burnt offering, with flour and oil and wine (Leviticus 23:12-13). Until it was offered, no one was to eat bread, parched corn or green ears "until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God" (Leviticus 23:14). Matthew Henry gave the reason plainly: "it was fit, if God and Israel feast together, that he should be served first." He drew the lesson for every generation: "we must always begin with God".
The ordinance waited nearly forty years for its first keeping. In the wilderness, Henry observed, "they sowed no corn; but God's feeding them there with bread from heaven obliged them hereafter not to grudge him his share of their bread out of the earth." When Israel crossed the Jordan and kept the passover at Gilgal, the book of Joshua records the change in a single sentence.
And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day. And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.
Joshua 5:10-12
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Henry read the day the manna ceased as the day of the sheaf, writing that "the manna ceased upon the very day that the sheaf of first-fruits was offered." Whether or not the sheaf was waved at Gilgal that morning, the turn is the same. The God who had fed his people from heaven now fed them from the land he gave, and the first of it belonged to him.
On the Morrow After the Sabbath
Leviticus does not give the sheaf a date of the month. It ties it to a day: "on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it". Faithful readers have understood that sabbath in two ways. The rabbis, and the first-century historian Josephus before them, took it to mean the first day of unleavened bread, which was itself a day of rest and holy convocation; on that reading the sheaf was waved on the sixteenth of the month, the day Josephus gives for it. Matthew Henry read it the same way: "the first is called the sabbath, because it was observed as a sabbath". Others, the Boethusians in the days of the second temple and the Karaite Jews after them, took it to mean the weekly sabbath that fell within the feast, so that the sheaf was always waved on the first day of the week, and the fiftieth day, "the morrow after the seventh sabbath" (Leviticus 23:16), always fell on the first day of the week as well.
For the Christian reader the question comes to rest on one morning. All four Gospels place the resurrection on the first day of the week, Matthew writing, "In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week" (Matthew 28:1). On the weekly-sabbath reading, that morning was the day of the sheaf in any year. On the sixteenth-day reading, how the days of that week fell depends on how the Gospels' account of the passover is harmonized, and Christians have weighed John's notes on it (John 18:28; 19:14; 19:31) in more than one way; the week is set out day by day in Holy Week Day by Day. Scripture itself settles what matters: the risen Christ is "the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Matthew Henry, who reckoned the sheaf by the sixteenth, still saw the two days meet: "It is very observable that our Lord Jesus rose from the dead on the very day that the first-fruits were offered, to show that he was the substance of this shadow." On the cross and its day, see Good Friday: The Crucifixion.
Christ the Firstfruits
Paul writes to the same church at Corinth with the sheaf in view. Some among them were saying there is no resurrection of the dead, and he answers with the feast.
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.
His word is the Greek word for the firstfruits8, a beginning of sacrifice, the first part offered for the rest. The force of the image lies in what a firstfruit is. It is not a different crop from the harvest. It is the first of the same field, cut and presented before the rest, and its acceptance is the pledge that the rest will follow. "For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy" (Romans 11:16). Christ was not raised as a private exception to death. He was raised as the first sheaf of a harvest that includes every one who belongs to him.
The church has read the verse this way from the beginning. Clement of Rome (99), writing to the same Corinthian church some forty years later, spoke of "a future resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead." Chrysostom pressed the logic home: "But if their first-fruits, then themselves also, must needs rise again." Matthew Henry wrote that "Christ's resurrection is a pledge and earnest of ours, if we are true believers in him; because he has risen, we shall rise." The harvest is gathered in order, as Paul says: "every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming."
The sheaf was waved "to be accepted for you", and the risen Christ is accepted for his people in the same way. He "was raised again for our justification" (Romans 4:25): his rising is the Father's acceptance of the sacrifice offered at the Passover. Jesus spoke of his death and rising in the language of the field.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
John 12:24
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Cyril of Alexandria (444) joined that saying to the sheaf of Leviticus: "like a sheaf of grain, the firstfruits, as it were, of the earth, he offered himself to the Father for our sake." For the whole argument of Paul's chapter, see The "Resurrection Chapter": An Exposition of 1 Corinthians 15.
From the Sheaf to the Harvest
The sheaf began a count. From the day it was waved Israel numbered seven sabbaths and came on the fiftieth day to the feast of weeks and the two loaves of the wheat harvest (Leviticus 23:15-17). Fifty days after the resurrection the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, and about three thousand souls were added in a day; that story is told in The Jewish Feasts: Pentecost (Shavuot). The language of firstfruits then passes to the church itself. Believers "have the firstfruits of the Spirit" while they wait for the redemption of the body (Romans 8:23), and James writes that God begat us with the word of truth, "that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures" (James 1:18).
Between them, the two feasts hold the gospel in a single week. The lamb is slain, and the house is cleared of leaven because the lamb has been slain. The first sheaf is lifted up and accepted, and the harvest is sure because the first of it has been received. For how all seven feasts of Leviticus 23 point to Christ, see The 7 Feasts of Israel and How They Point to Christ. The feast of unleavened bread is kept now in sincerity and truth, not for seven days but all our days, and it is kept in hope, for the firstfruits has already risen.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.