Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread.

This line comes from the Hebrew Bible’s instructions for the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Chag HaMatzot), closely linked with Passover and the Exodus narrative. In the biblical account, Israelites are commanded to eat unleavened bread for seven days and to remove leaven from their houses, commemorating the haste of departure from Egypt when there was no time for dough to rise. The command functions both as ritual law and as a recurring act of communal memory, marking Israel’s liberation story annually through a distinctive dietary practice and household preparation.

On its surface, the sentence is a straightforward ritual directive: for a full week, the community’s staple bread must be made without leaven. Symbolically, unleavened bread becomes a material reminder of urgency, displacement, and deliverance—food that encodes history. The seven-day duration gives the commemoration a complete, structured rhythm, turning memory into sustained practice rather than a single moment. In later Jewish tradition and interpretation, the removal of leaven can also suggest moral and spiritual self-scrutiny (casting out “puffiness” or corruption), though the biblical text itself primarily grounds the practice in historical remembrance and covenant obedience.