When Unleavened Bread Begins

The traditional order rests on one large assumption: that the Last Supper was the Passover meal. If it was, the supper fell on the Passover itself, and the rest of the week has to be fitted around that. If it was not, the whole week shifts. So before we look at the supper, we need to know exactly when the Passover meal was to be eaten, and from what point God’s people were commanded to eat unleavened bread.

In the first century these were not obscure questions. The rules of Passover and of the Feast of Unleavened Bread stood at the center of Jewish life, and every household knew them. The Torah states them with care.

The Command in Exodus

When God gave Israel the Passover in Egypt, He set the time at which the eating of unleavened bread would begin and the time at which it would end.

Exodus 12:18 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month, in the evening.

The obligation begins “on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening,” and it runs “until the twenty-first day of the month, in the evening.” Apply what Part One laid down. A biblical day begins with evening. So the words “the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening” mark the evening with which the fourteenth day begins. The moment the daytime of the thirteenth passed into that evening, the fourteenth had begun, and from that very evening unleavened bread was to be eaten. The command then held, day after day, to the evening of the twenty-first: seven days in all. And because no leavened food could have been made ready ahead of time for that evening, in practice no leaven was eaten through the whole evening of the twenty-first.

The same chapter tells what was eaten on the first of those evenings.

Exodus 12:8 And they shall eat the meat (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') in this night, roasted with fire, and unleavened bread; with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

The meat of the lamb was eaten “in this night,” the Passover night, “roasted with fire, and unleavened bread.” The Passover meal and unleavened bread went together from the beginning. There was no Passover meal with leavened bread on the table.

The Order in Leviticus

Leviticus 23 sets the appointed times of the Lord in order through the year, and the first two stand together at its head.

Leviticus 23:5-7 In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month, between the evenings, is a Passover to the LORD. And on the fifteenth day of this month is the feast (chag חַג khag) of unleavened bread to the LORD; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ mik-raw') shall be to you; any work of service (avodah עֲבֹדָה ab-o-daw') you shall not do.

Two things here need to be kept apart. First, the Passover belongs to the fourteenth of the month. The YLV gives the Hebrew phrase exactly, “between the evenings,” and because much depends on that phrase, Chapter 29 is given to it. For now it is enough to see that the Passover is the appointed time with which the fourteenth begins.

Second, “on the fifteenth day of this month is the feast (chag) of unleavened bread.” The feast itself is set on the fifteenth, and its first day is “a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh),” a day on which no work of service was to be done. Later in this book, in Chapter 34, we return to that day, the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread.

Read the two passages together. The eating of unleavened bread begins, as Exodus says, with the evening of the fourteenth, together with the Passover lamb eaten that night. The feast of unleavened bread is set on the fifteenth. The command to eat unleavened bread then holds through the seven days, from the moment the daytime of the thirteenth passes into the evening of the fourteenth to the evening of the twenty-first.

The Same Order in Numbers

When Moses later set out the offerings for each appointed time, he kept the same order.

Numbers 28:16-17 And in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, is the Passover to the LORD. And on the fifteenth day of this month is a feast (chag); seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten.

The Passover on the fourteenth, the feast on the fifteenth, and unleavened bread eaten for seven days: Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers agree.

Times That God Appointed

Why are the dates so exact? Leviticus 23 opens its list of the yearly appointed times with a sentence that sets the tone for all of them.

Leviticus 23:4 These are the appointed times (moadim מוֹעֵד mo-ade') of the LORD, holy convocations (miqra-qodesh), which you shall proclaim them in their appointed time (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade').

These are “the appointed times (moadim) of the LORD,” to be proclaimed “in their appointed time (moed).” The word moed means a time fixed in advance, a set meeting. The feasts were not seasons that each household could begin when it felt ready. God fixed their days, and He fixed them in writing, so that all Israel would keep them together. As we saw in Book 1, the whole calendar of these appointed times was given with that same care. That is why a question about the Last Supper can be answered from the Torah at all: the Torah does not leave the day of the Passover, or the evening on which unleavened bread begins, to guesswork.

What the Fourteenth Means for the Supper

Now return to the Gospels. If the Last Supper had been the Passover meal, it would have been eaten as the fourteenth began, “in the evening,” with the lamb roasted with fire and with unleavened bread. Every household in Jerusalem would have been eating the same meal that same night, and the bread on every table, including the table of Yeshua and His disciples, would have had to be unleavened.

The Torah did not leave that to anyone’s preference. Whoever ate leavened bread during those days was to be cut off from Israel, as the next chapter will show. So the question of the bread at the Last Supper is not a small one. It tells us which evening that supper was eaten on.

Where the Line Falls

So the Torah draws its line, and it draws it in writing. Unleavened bread begins with the evening of the fourteenth. The Passover belongs to that fourteenth day. The feast of unleavened bread is on the fifteenth. Nowhere in these verses does the line fall earlier than the evening of the fourteenth.

That raises a question that sounds simple but turns out to be decisive. If the Torah begins the unleavened bread with the fourteenth, what did it command for the thirteenth? Many readers assume that the days just before Passover were already days of unleavened bread. The next chapter searches the Torah for the thirteenth day.