deō

At its root this verb pictures the simplest of actions: taking a cord, a chain, or a strip of cloth and tying something so it cannot move freely. The New Testament uses it for tying up a young donkey, bundling weeds for burning, and wrapping a dead body for burial. From that plain physical picture the word stretches outward, but always along the same line of thought, so the connection is easy to see.

The most common stretch is toward custody. To bind a person was to arrest and chain them, and the verb becomes the ordinary word for jailing someone: John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, and Paul are all said to be bound. The image stays concrete (real chains, a real prison), even when the point is the captivity rather than the cords.

The word also reaches into the world of relationships and commitments, where a binding tie holds a person not by rope but by obligation. A wife is bound to her husband for life; a man is bound to a wife. In one striking line Paul says he himself is bound in spirit as he travels to Jerusalem, gripped by an inner compulsion he cannot shake.

Its most debated use is the pairing of binding and loosing that Jesus gives to Peter and the disciples. Here binding carries the sense of declaring something forbidden, with heaven standing behind the verdict. Across all these uses one idea holds steady: something or someone is fastened, held, and not free to move, whether by a literal cord, by chains, or by a binding word.