אָסִיר“prisoner”The Hebrew word asir, "prisoner," is the standard form of the noun and the one dictionaries list first. It names a person held in confinement: Joseph's fellow inmates in the Egyptian jail, the captives sitting in darkness in the Psalms, the crushed prisoners of Lamentations, and the "prisoners of hope" of Zechariah. The spelling assir is the same word in a slightly different form, and it is used the same way, so the two can be read together as one word for a captive.