unleavened-bread
Definition
Unleavened bread (Hebrew: מַצָּה matzah; Greek: ἄζυμος azymos) is the bread without yeast eaten in Exodus 12 as part of the Passover meal. It symbolized the haste of Israel’s exodus — no time for the dough to rise — and in its OT meaning the purity of the people before their deliverance. In the NT, unleavened bread is typologically understood as a depiction of Christ and his purity.
Author Variant
Noordzij
Noordzij sees unleavened bread as part of the passover ritual that points in perfection to the New Covenant. The bread as old (material, ceremonial) is only shadow of the new (spiritual, real).
In his typological schema, unleavened bread forms together with the passover lamb and the blood an integrated type of Christ’s redemptive work. Where the passover lamb points to Christ as sacrificial lamb, unleavened bread points to the quality of what Christ offers: purity of flesh and spirit.
The unleavened bread — the old — is perfect as a foreshadowing of the new. Jesus makes everything ‘old’ radically ‘new’: no longer bakery bread, but the heavenly bread (epiousios), the spiritual nourishment. [Noordzij, Brood en Wijn, b9]
Unleavened bread thus represents the form of the type, while the passover lamb is the content. The fulfillment in Christ means that both — bread and lamb — lose their shadow-function and give way to the reality: Christ as the living bread (John 6:35) and the Lamb of God (John 1:29). This is not a repetition of the ritual (as if the Lord’s Supper must be a passover ceremony), but a complete transformation: spiritual participation rather than ceremonial commemoration.