Properly, sweetness ; concretely, sweet (i.e. not soured or bittered with yeast); specifically, an unfermented cake or loaf, or (elliptically) the festival of Passover (because no leaven was then used)
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The Hebrew noun maṣāh names bread, cakes, or wafers prepared without leaven. Genesis mentions such bread in an urgent household meal before Israel's Passover commands, so the food is not inherently limited to one ritual setting.
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Full entry for מַצָּה (H4682) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun maṣāh names bread, cakes, or wafers prepared without leaven. Genesis mentions such bread in an urgent household meal before Israel's Passover commands, so the food is not inherently limited to one ritual setting.
The BSB source-word alignment has 53 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include unleavened bread (17), of Unleavened Bread (15), unleavened (5), and the unleavened bread (2), and unleavened (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 19:3. Its strongest book concentrations include Exodus (16), Leviticus (12), Numbers (7), 2 Chronicles (4).
The Hebrew noun maṣāh names bread, cakes, or wafers prepared without leaven. Genesis mentions such bread in an urgent household meal before Israel's Passover commands, so the food is not inherently limited to one ritual setting. In Exodus, unleavened bread belongs to the Passover meal, Israel's hurried departure from oppression, and the seven-day memorial of deliverance.
Deuteronomy calls it bread of affliction so later generations remember both the haste and the Lord's rescue. Leviticus includes unleavened cakes and wafers in particular grain offerings, while Joshua joins them to Israel's first eating from Canaan's produce after the manna ceased. Ezra records returned exiles keeping the festival with joy after the temple was restored.
The noun itself does not mean moral purity in every verse, make leaven universally sinful, transfer Israel's festival obligations unchanged to every Christian, or reduce Jewish observance to a discarded illustration. Responsible teaching distinguishes ordinary food, Passover memorial, offering instructions, land transition, and postexilic celebration. It remembers suffering and liberation together, honors Jewish covenant context, and lets later New Testament uses make their own claims.
Maṣāh moves through ordinary hospitality, the Passover night, memorial practice, grain offerings, entry into the land, and postexilic celebration. Its absence of leaven gains meaning from each commanded or narrated setting.
But Lot insisted so strongly that they followed him into his house. He prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
Lot serves unleavened bread in an urgent meal before the Exodus festival exists, showing that the food form can appear outside later Passover observance.
They are to eat the meat that night, roasted over the fire, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
Unleavened bread and bitter herbs accompany the roasted Passover lamb on the night of judgment, protection, readiness, and Israel's departure from Egypt.
Since their dough had no leaven, the people baked what they had brought out of Egypt into unleavened loaves. For when they had been driven out of Egypt, they could not delay and had not prepared any provisions for themselves.
The departing people bake unleavened loaves because they are driven out without time or prepared provisions, grounding the bread in real haste and vulnerability.
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.
The bread of affliction is eaten so Israel remembers lifelong the hurried exodus, joining embodied food practice to communal memory of deliverance.
Now if you bring an offering of grain baked in an oven, it must consist of fine flour, either unleavened cakes mixed with oil or unleavened wafers coated with oil.
Unleavened cakes or wafers mixed or coated with oil form one permitted preparation of the grain offering, within detailed priestly instructions.
The day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate unleavened bread and roasted grain from the produce of the land.
After keeping Passover, Israel eats unleavened bread and roasted grain from the land's produce just before the manna ceases.
For seven days they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread with joy, because the Lord had made them joyful and turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to strengthen their hands in the work on the house of the God of Israel.
Returned exiles keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread with joy after temple dedication, renewed service, Passover, and unexpected imperial support.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Unleavened bread embodies ritual purity and covenant commemoration, opposing fermentation's corruption symbolism.
Unleavened bread embodies ritual purity and covenant commemoration, opposing fermentation's corruption symbolism.
properly, sweetness; concretely, sweet (i.e. not soured or bittered with yeast); specifically, an unfermented cake or loaf, or (elliptically) the festival of Passover (because no leaven was then used) BDB: unleavened bread Usage: unleaved (bread, cake), without leaven.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
מַצָּה is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Maṣāh teaches through food that must be located in a story. Genesis shows unleavened bread in urgent hospitality before Sinai, preventing a rule that every occurrence is Passover. Exodus binds the bread to a night of judgment, protected households, bitter herbs, readiness, and a departure so rapid that dough cannot rise. Deuteronomy names bread of affliction so a later generation tastes remembered oppression and rescue rather than celebrating abundance without history.
Leviticus places unleavened preparations within a specific grain-offering system, where ingredients, priests, altar portions, and holiness all matter. Joshua marks a transition from manna to the land's produce, and Ezra shows a restored community celebrating with joy after exile and temple rebuilding. Later Scripture can use leaven or unleavened imagery morally, but that figurative use must not erase the food's covenant and historical settings.
Faithful teaching remembers liberation without trivializing Egyptian grief, honors Jewish observance without appropriation or contempt, and avoids treating a food technique as a universal spiritual test. The bread invites gratitude, memory, worship, and solidarity with people forced to leave before they are ready.
Deut.16.3
Maṣāh is a feminine Hebrew noun usually found in plural forms and rendered unleavened bread, cakes, or wafers. Some passages use the noun for the food itself, while others use it within the festival's name. Syntax and covenant setting distinguish meal, offering, and observance.
The Gospels place Jesus' final meal within Passover and festival chronology, and Paul uses leaven and unleavened imagery in First Corinthians 5 to call a congregation toward sincerity and truth. Those Greek texts make their own covenant and pastoral claims. They should be read as canonical development without erasing Israel's exodus memory or contemporary Jewish observance.