asir

BDB, HALOT and DCH treat both spellings of the noun as a single lexeme meaning "prisoner, captive", derived from the verb אָסַר "to bind", and none of them divides the material into distinct senses. The two spellings are distributed without discernible semantic difference, which is why the lexica cross-reference rather than separate them. TDOT's treatment of the אסר word group observes that the noun occurs overwhelmingly in contexts of divine hearing and release, especially in the Psalter and in Isaiah 42:7, rather than in judicial or penal contexts; there is no biblical Hebrew vocabulary for imprisonment as a formal punishment. Three passages raise textual or contextual questions that are not lexical. Isaiah 10:4 is a long-standing crux, and a series of commentators since the late nineteenth century have proposed redividing or emending בלתי כרע תחת אסיר to recover the names of foreign deities; Wildberger surveys the proposals and retains the received consonants with the ordinary noun. At 1 Chronicles 3:17 the Masoretic אַסִּר following Jeconiah is taken by most recent commentators and modern versions as an appellative, "Jeconiah the captive", whereas the Septuagint and the Vulgate transliterate it as a personal name; Japhet lays out both readings and the genealogical consequences of each. At Zechariah 9:12 Meyers and Meyers read אֲסִירֵי הַתִּקְוָה as characterizing exiles who are already literal captives, against readings that make hope itself the binding agent.