What is a solemn assembly in the Bible?

'A calling together,' and always called 'holy.' The occasions called 'holy convocations' are specially given in Lev. 23 when the Feasts are recorded; they included the Sabbath, and ended with the Feast of Tabernacles. "These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord." Lev. 23:37. It occurs also in Ex. 12:16; Num. 28:18, 25, 26; Num. 29:1, 7, 12. The same Hebrew word is translated 'assemblies' in Isa. 1:13; Isa. 4:5.

The idea of these feasts is the gathering of the people round Jehovah for some cause or other, a "holy convocation."

Chapter 22 ended with a solemn reminder to Israel of the holiness of Jehovah, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt to be their God. Chapter 23 opens with the fact that He desired to have the people, whom He had thus redeemed, assembled before Him. A "convocation" is a "calling together," and this was to mark the feasts of the Lord.

We come now in this feast to "a holy convocation." Whatever exercise we have in our individual life in this world, we must never forget the pleasure God has in gathering His people together. If we walk before Him, well-pleasing in His sight, we will indeed value and be a help to "the holy convocation." What a privilege, as free from legitimate things — servile work — to come together to enjoy the circle of blessing which is ours in Christ. Not to take up that service for Christ as servile work, nor to seek to worship God in a servile way, but in the liberty of Sonship by the Spirit, praise and worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. This would produce the elements of a feast to God when in "holy convocation."

"Holy Convocations." These suggest collective gatherings. It seems that our God delights to have His people together with a single thought in their minds — to collectively minister to Him. He would guard them from any intrusion of the fleshly mind of man by reminding us that they are "HOLY"! We have to remember this, wonderful as the privilege may be, in our gatherings together to be ever conscious that He is there; that we come together for His pleasure, subdued, dependent, with holy reverence in our souls. This is the state that will lead to a spiritual production of that which will indeed be to God a feast. This would produce quality, even if it reduced quantity and all would be the better for it and God would be more rightly praised. These then are the instructive communications to our souls as preparing us for the unfolding of His mind in this wonderful chapter.

"Set times" are times of His appointment, to whom as the Eternal all times belong, and who is able to adjust them to His purpose. They speak of almighty power, and determinate counsel vindicating thus their place here. But they are "holy convocations" also, gathering times, when the voice of God arouses and assembles His people. His voice unites those who listen to it in obedience, and calls also to Himself.

These seven are called 'the set feasts.' Num. 29:39; 1 Chr. 23:31; 2 Chr. 31:3; Neh. 10:33. Also 'holy convocations,' when the people assembled together to offer the various offerings, and thus be reminded of their association with the living God, to whom they owed all their blessings. To ensure this at least thrice in the year, it was enjoined that all the males should appear before the Lord three times in the year, and they must not appear empty. These times were at the Feast of Unleavened Bread (no doubt including the Passover); the Feast of Weeks, or of Harvest; and the Feast of Tabernacles, or 'of Ingathering.' Ex. 23:14-17; Deut. 16:16. See PASSOVER, etc.

Then comes the second blowing of the trumpets; but this is distinct. "Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly." It is not now, "Sound an alarm," but, "Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly." It is the gathering of the people to God, not merely their loud call on God to appear for them in their great alarm before the enemy. "Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of Jehovah, weep between the porch and the altar." Thus there is the complete prostration of the people as a whole, even to the very bridegroom and bride and sucking child; including the priests too as well as the people, but not in their own place; for they have to come out, and are with the people in humiliation, not apart in official dignity. It is the most admirable picture of a nation humbling itself before God; so that all classes of society — in political, religious, and family life — give way to the sense of their sin before God. There is no such leveller as sin, or that which is the consequence of sin — death; but it is a blessed thing when the gracious call of God works repentance, which really means the heart taking the place of owning our own evil and accepting what God thereon has to say to us. There is nothing more admirable for a soul, unless it be the grace of God which produces it. But, morally considered, repentance is always wholesome for His people, conscious of having unworthily answered to the grace He had shown them. It cannot but lead to restored communion through self-judgment, and to a practical obedience according to it. So it will be with the Jew by and by. "And let them say, Spare thy people, O Jehovah, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where [is] their God?" The marginal alteration for "rule over" is "use a by-word against." But the text is confirmed by the ancient versions, as indeed the construction of the margin seems contrary to Hebrew idiom, the noun only (not the verb) admitting of the sense of derision.

Returning to our chapter, the call comes not merely to lament and sorrow, which was all right, and the intended effect of so grave a visitation of God, but more — "Sanctify ye a fast." It is more than appointing one. Sanctification always supposes separation to God. Sanctified ourselves by grace, we are entitled so to deal even with the most ordinary matters by the word of God and prayer, as we are exhorted to do in 1 Tim. 4. It brings God in. Without this it cannot be. "Call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of Jehovah your God, and cry to Jehovah."

First the Trumpets are blown and gather Israel; and then, on the tenth day of the same month, Israel enters into the day of Atonement. Not that we do not enter into it long before, but here it is for them. You have had the beginning of Israel again, so to speak, in the Trumpets and Atonement made, and then follows the feast of Tabernacles, from the fifteenth day of the month, seven days unto Jehovah. The first day is a holy convocation, and the eighth day a holy convocation, that is, an additional day. When the feast of Tabernacles on earth is come, we shall get the heavenly things too. It is a "solemn assembly" when God has a complete thing; that is an expression applied here only to the Tabernacles; it is once used in a peculiar manner of the Passover.