to lead, conduct, or carry someone or something to a destination, often in solemn or ceremonial procession
At its heart this verb pictures one act: conducting a person or a thing along to where it is meant to arrive. It works both ways, actively (someone leads or carries) and passively (someone or something is led or borne along), and the same core act covers a surprising range of scenes.
Three of those scenes recur:
- a bride and her companions led to the king in festal procession
- gifts and tribute carried and presented to God or a ruler
- a victim led away to slaughter, and the dead borne to the grave
What ties them together is the note of ceremony. This is not the plain, everyday word for bringing something (בוא), nor the word for driving a flock from behind (נהג); it leans toward escorting, conducting, or bearing along with a sense of occasion. That is why it fits a wedding train, a tribute caravan, and a funeral alike.
The passive uses give the word its most famous line. The servant is "led" like a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7), borne along without resisting, and the Greek translation that the New Testament quotes reaches for ἄγω to carry the same picture.