Bible Strands
Exodus 12:15
For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the leaven from your houses. Whoever eats anything leavened from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks to Moses and Aaron, addressing the whole Israelite community immediately after the first Passover ordinance. He establishes the seven-day festival requirements that follow the initial deliverance night.
The words — מַצּוֹת (matzot) translates literally as unleavened breads, and תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ (tashbitu) means you will remove or cause to cease. These terms specify the exact food to be consumed and the active duty to purge leaven from households.
The thread — The command to eat only unleavened bread for seven days recurs in Deuteronomy 16:3 and Exodus 23:15 as a standing festival statute. The penalty of being cut off from Israel mirrors the covenantal exclusion language in Genesis 17:14.
Why it lands — The text requires a strict seven-day dietary boundary and the complete removal of leaven from every home. It demands that readers treat this purification as a non-negotiable condition for remaining within the covenant community.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
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.
Cross-references
- Genesis 17:14 But if any male is not circumcised, he will be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
- Deuteronomy 16:3 You must not eat leavened bread with it; for seven days you are to eat with it unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left the land of Egypt in haste—so that you may remember for the rest of your life the day you left the land of Egypt.
- Exodus 23:15 You are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread as I commanded you: At the appointed time in the month of Abib you are to eat unleavened bread for seven days, because that was the month you came out of Egypt. No one may appear before Me empty-handed.
- Exodus 34:18 You are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, you are to eat unleavened bread as I commanded you. For in the month of Abib you came out of Egypt.
- Numbers 9:13 But if a man who is ceremonially clean and is not on a journey still fails to observe the Passover, he must be cut off from his people, because he did not present the LORD’s offering at its appointed time. That man will bear the consequences of his sin.
- Numbers 28:17 On the fifteenth day of this month, there shall be a feast; for seven days unleavened bread is to be eaten.
- Deuteronomy 16:8 For six days you must eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day you shall hold a solemn assembly to the LORD your God, and you must not do any work.
- Exodus 12:8 They are to eat the meat that night, roasted over the fire, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
- Exodus 12:19 For seven days there must be no leaven found in your houses. If anyone eats something leavened, that person, whether a foreigner or native of the land, must be cut off from the congregation of Israel.
- Exodus 34:25 Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to Me along with anything leavened, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.