A SOLEMN ASSEMBLY — a formal convocation of the whole community, from atsar, 'to restrain, hold back' (so: a day on which ordinary work stops). It normally names the closing day of a festival (Leviticus 23:36; Deuteronomy 16:8). ⭐ Where it dates itself it is almost always the EIGHTH day, appended to a seven-day feast — Leviticus 23:36, Numbers 29:35, Solomon's dedication at 2 Chronicles 7:9 and Nehemiah's reading of the law at Nehemiah 8:18. Deuteronomy 16:8 is the exception: there it falls on the SEVENTH, because Unleavened Bread runs seven days and has no eighth to add one to. ⚠ Joel reassigns the machinery of CELEBRATION to catastrophe: 'sanctify a fast, call an atzarah' (1:14, repeated almost word for word at 2:15) — the same summons that gathers the nation for a feast, used to gather it to cry out. Isaiah 1:13 uses the word the other way, as something God cannot bear. ⭐ Numbers 29:35-38 gives the word its own sacrificial detail — the eighth-day atzarah that closes the Feast of Tabernacles, its offering matching the New Year's own count exactly, animal for animal. → first discussed at Joel 1:14