to plunder: to carry off the goods, livestock, and people of a defeated enemy as the spoils of war
This is the standard biblical word for taking the spoil after a battle is won. It pictures the victor stripping the loser of everything portable: cattle, silver and gold, clothing, household goods, and often the surviving people themselves. The act is almost always tied to warfare or a raid, and the thing seized is the prize of conquest.
The word works in two directions, which is why it can take such different objects. Sometimes the focus is on the loot itself, what the soldiers grab and haul away. Other times the focus is on the victim, the city or nation that gets stripped bare. Both are the same action seen from opposite ends, so the senses below sort by who or what is on the receiving end rather than by any change in the core idea.
The Bible also turns the word back on the plunderers. In Israel's prophets, a nation that has spent its history plundering others is warned that it will one day be plundered in turn. So the same verb that names a triumphant army's reward also names a judged people's ruin, and the reversal is part of its rhetorical force.