God continues to reinforce the purpose and meaning of this feast. Verse 3 commands the eating of unleavened bread to remember God’s deliverance. And if you are counting by now, this passage contains two more references to deliverance as the reason for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Numerologists tell us that eight indicates super-abundance and a new beginning, which is an interesting detail. The unleavened bread is a token to remind God’s people each year of God’s liberation so they could have a new beginning. This disruption to our normal food reinforces our memory of His works.
Verse 3 mentions “the bread of affliction.” Various translations and paraphrases call it “hard-times bread,” “the bread of hardship,” “the bread of tribulation,” and “the bread of distress.” One paraphrase says it is “a basic of affliction.” So, the theme of Egypt as a place of affliction or hardship enters the picture. Exodus 3 & 4 refer to Israel’s affliction and oppression in Egypt—same word. This theme begins back with Joseph’s naming of his son, Ephraim. Joseph says, “For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” At that point, Joseph had been liberated from slavery and from prison and was now the second-in-command, but he still refers to Egypt as “the land of my affliction.”
So, each bite of unleavened bread includes with it a reminder of the former oppression and slavery under a hostile ruler. For us, it can recall the days before conversion when we believed we were free to do whatever we wanted, and probably didn’t recognize who we were serving or the ways in which we were enslaved. That is not the only meaning of unleavened bread, because the New Testament gives some additional themes that we will get to. But our former affliction and oppression before God’s intervention are principal parts of what the unleavened bread should call to mind as we eat it each day this week.
