WHAT DO YOU MEAN – SOLEMN?

By Richard Burkard


Some times of the year in Sabbath-keeping Church of God groups are noisier than others. The hubbub of fellowship on the opening night of a Feast of Tabernacles can make a hall electric. Yet six months before that, the atmosphere is supposed to be quiet – funeral quiet.


A “Passover Seder” in the Jewish tradition is somewhat festive. While there's a lot of emphasis on holiness and ritualism, a “feast” meal is served with several cups of wine and songs. On the other hand, “Passover night” in COG's comes across as the most holy night of the year. We've noted in other articles on this website how everyone is expected to be silent except for the speakers. Ministers leave their joke books at home – and even COG critics have noted the noisiest part of the service tends to come when matzoh is broken to symbolize Jesus's body.


A COG minister used a word for this which caused me to stop and think. He called the New Testament Passover a “solemn” observance. Yet in a separate note, he also called the Night to be Much Observed on the following night a “solemn” occasion – even though the mood on that night traditionally is very different, with open fellowship and one of the nicest dinners members eat all year.


Two very different occasions and atmospheres. 24 hours apart.... yet they're both solemn?! How can that be? This sparked me to see what the Bible said about that word. What I found surprised me, and may surprise you as well.


I went to the King James Version and Strong's Exhaustive Concordance for this word study. That's because “solemn” is a word which doesn't seem to come up too often today, even in modern church-speak. (That word and variants are only in the NIV 12 times.)


The Proper Times

“Then Solomon offered burnt offerings to the Lord.... on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts, three times in the year, even in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles,” we learn in II Chronicles 8:12-13.


Notice how specific the wording is. Offerings were made weekly (sabbaths), monthly (new moons) and “three times in the year” at annual festival seasons. Those annual feasts are called “solemn” – while rather surprisingly, the weekly Sabbath is not!


Many other verses in the Old Testament refer to feast days as solemn:

Hosea 2:11 shows God again making a distinction between a people's “feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.” The New International Version indicates God lists three sub-categories under a broader “feast day” category (see also Lamentations 2:6).


I could find no verse specifically calling a weekly Sabbath “solemn.” The word is connected to other occasions. And a close look at the Hebrew reveals that word is not an adjective modifying the noun “feast days,” along the lines of a “fluffy sweater” or a “blue plate.” It's all a part of the same Hebrew words – as if an annual feast day is “solemn” by definition!


So how are believers supposed to respond to this? Is every annual Holy Day supposed to be a time for whispering, like Passover night historically has been?


We must note right away that the word “solemn” is not found in the KJV New Testament. Yet the phrase “feast day” appears several times, with “day” italicized to indicate the translators added it to the text for clarity. The feasts which are mentioned are Passover (e.g. Matthew 26:2, 5), the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:2) – and a mysterious “feast of the Jews” in John 5:1, which many Bible commentaries assume is the Passover/unleavened bread season.


What Jesus Did

The lack of our key word opens the door for interpretation about whether the idea of solemnity lasted to the time of Jesus and beyond. Yet we can find deeper clues into how the Lord marked those annual festivals. John 2:23 indicates He performed miracles during the Days of Unleavened Bread – which probably shouldn't be shocking, since God did the same for Israel at the Red Sea during the same season (traditionally Exodus 14).


“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried....” (John 7:37) A growing view in COG's is that this refers to the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, not the “eighth day” considered a Holy Day. Yet either way, Jesus spoke “in a loud voice,” as the NIV translates the verse (“shouted” says CEV/NLT) – and did it during a solemn occasion. If it was wrong, would the Lord have done it?


Long before this, Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 2:7 of people who “have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.” It actually was made by the enemies of Israel – and Strong's indicates it was a noise along the lines to “call aloud.”


Music and More

Even the standard COG Holy Day hymn Praise the Eternal With a Psalm includes the words, “Blow on the trumpet, sound the drum, on our solemn feast day....” That noisy language comes from Psalm 81:3 - although the “drum” is not Scriptural, and was added by Dwight Armstrong.


So yes, a “solemn occasion” can be a noisy one – even though my KJV margin indicates a “solemn assembly” can mean a “day of restraint” (Joel 1:14). We could understand the restraint to mean the lack of secular, worldly emphasis.


The Bible also shows another time when things can be solemn – in making protests. When the people of Israel asked for a king to judge them instead of the prophet Samuel, God told Samuel, “Now therefore hearken to their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly to them....” (I Samuel 8:9) Once again, Strong's shows “solemn” and “protest” to be the same Hebrew word; solemn is not a modifying adjective.


The remainder of chapter 8 indicates the phrase meant words of warning about what upcoming kings would do – not all of it nice. “Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel....” verse 19 says. Based on verse 4, this was apparently a national conference of elders - so I suspect Samuel had to speak loudly to address all of them.


A Solemn Future

The Bible looks ahead to a time when nations will worship in a new temple in Jerusalem. “But when the people of the land shall come before the Lord in the solemn feasts, he that enters in by the way of the north gate to worship shall go out by the way of the south gate: and he that enters by the way of the south gate shall go forth by the way of the north gate: he shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came in, but shall go forth over against it” (Ezekiel 46:9).


For a time after reading this verse, I applied it at weekly worship services – going out a different door from the one I entered, even if that meant using a fire door. But the preparation of this article showed me this actually will be done only for “solemn feast” days, as we mentioned above. (“Solemnities” in verse 11 refers to that as well.)


Not all who come to worship will be joyful. In fact, Zephaniah 3:18 says, “I will gather them that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly....” But they might receive comfort from what Psalm 92:3 calls “a solemn sound” upon a harp. The Hebrew indicates this could be music with warmth and tenderness – a bit like “murmuring,” as opposed to something loud and boisterous.


That was the only real case I found in the Bible where “solemn” leans toward being quiet in sound or spirit. Yet we've seen in other places that a solemn occasion can still be loud and festive.


Perhaps the ultimate lesson of this is that being solemn can take many forms. Even my American Heritage Dictionary shows the word can mean: “Deeply earnest; serious; grave.... Performed with full ceremony.... Gloomy; somber.” It certainly gets interpreted in different ways at different COG events. The question for you is: are those interpretations accurate and appropriate?



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