Leviticus 16:29 (WEB)
“It shall be a statute to you forever: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and shall do no kind of work, whether native-born or a stranger who lives as a foreigner among you;
As quoted in the map (KJV)
Leviticus 16:29 (KJV)
And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger that sojourneth among you:
Key words
- תְּעַנּוּ אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶםte'annu et-nafshotekhem · Hebrew
- 'ye shall afflict your souls' — the Day of Atonement's self-denial, the same idiom as the woman's vow 'to afflict the soul' in Numbers 30:13.
Why it matters
On the Day of Atonement Israel must 'afflict' or 'deny' themselves. Pitre reports Jacob Milgrom's finding that the oldest interpretations of this verse include abstinence from marital relations among the acts of self-denial (Mishnah, Yoma 8:1), alongside fasting (pp 97–98). Since Numbers 30 uses the same idiom for a woman's vow, a vow 'to afflict the soul' can be a vow of sexual abstinence — the key that makes the Numbers 30 argument for Mary's vow work.