Bible Verses About Humiliation and Self-Affliction

“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, the native-born, or the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you:

for on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before the LORD.

It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute forever.

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying,

“However on the tenth day of this seventh month is Yom Kippur: it shall be a holy convocation to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.

You shall do no kind of work in that same day; for it is Yom Kippur, to make atonement for you before the LORD your God.

For whoever it is who shall not deny himself in that same day; shall be cut off from his people.

Whoever it is who does any kind of work in that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people.

You shall do no kind of work: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

It shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall deny yourselves. In the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall keep your Sabbath.”

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek of him a straight way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance.

For I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on the way, because we had spoken to the king, saying, “The hand of our God is on all those who seek him, for good; but his power and his wrath is against all those who forsake him.”

So we fasted and begged our God for this: and he was entreated of us.