the Third Week after Easter
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Leaven
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Leaven. Any substance that promotes fermentation. Sour dough is generally used in the East for this purpose; lees of wine are also employed. The fermentation produced is a kind of putrefaction; indeed it is distributed into three kinds, the vinous, the acetous, the putrefactive. All leaven was prohibited in meat-offerings, Leviticus 2:11; Leviticus 7:12; Leviticus 8:2; Numbers 6:15, and specially in the paschal feast of the Hebrews, Exodus 12:3; Exodus 12:19-20; whence this was often called "the feast of unleavened bread." Matthew 26:17. The nature of leaven, affecting the whole lump of the substance to which it is added, furnishes some striking illustrations in Scripture, Matthew 13:33; Matthew 16:6; 1 Corinthians 6:6; as also does the corruption it had undergone; thus we have warnings in Luke 12:1; 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, where the word is symbolically used for corruptness of life, or doctrine.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Leaven'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/l/leaven.html. 1893.
