AFFLICT YOUR SOULS — the command (16:29, 31) behind the fast still kept on Yom Kippur, and an idiom broader than the practice it produced. The verse never uses tzum, Hebrew's ordinary word for fasting; inuy nefesh is closer to 'self-denial' in general, later crystallized by rabbinic tradition (Mishnah Yoma 8:1) into five specific deprivations — food, drink, washing, anointing, and sandals — of which going without food is only the first. KJV/ASV keep the literal 'afflict your souls'; NIV smooths to 'deny yourselves'; The Living Bible paraphrases the later practice outright — 'you must go without food.' The same phrase recurs at Isaiah 58:3, 5 and Psalm 35:13 (neither yet on these pages), where fasting is explicitly in view — the strongest evidence for how this idiom came to mean what it now means. ⭐ Numbers 29:7 is its third Torah appearance, in the exact same wording as Leviticus 16 and 23 — the tabernacle calendar repeats the phrase rather than coining a new one. → first discussed at Lev 16:29