EXODUS 12:39 — KING JAMES VERSION 0 0
“And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual.”
With the dough the Israelites had brought from Egypt, they baked loaves of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves. The explanation for the unleavened bread is now given narratively rather than prescriptively: they did not have time. The urgency of the departure encoded in the dough becomes the urgency encoded in the feast. Every generation that eats unleavened bread at Passover relives this moment — the hasty departure, the unrisen dough, the morning when Egypt became the past. Paul's instruction in 1 Corinthians 5:7–8 to celebrate the festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth draws on this moment: the sincerity of the unleavened bread is the sincerity of people who left when God said leave, without waiting for circumstances to be more convenient.
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