to go astray: to wander off the right course, whether on a path, in conduct, or through the loss of steady judgment
At its heart this verb pictures leaving the straight course. A sheep drifts from the flock, a traveler is pushed off the road, a person turns aside from God's commands, a drinker can no longer walk a straight line, a lover is swept off his feet. In every case something or someone that should be moving in one direction has veered off it.
Because the image is so flexible, English needs several different words to carry it. When the straying is moral the natural word is "go astray" or "err"; when it is a mistake made without meaning to, it becomes "err" in the sense of an honest slip; when the cause is wine it becomes "reel" or "stagger"; when the cause is love it becomes "be intoxicated" or "ravished." The Old Testament even plays on this range: the same verb that tells a young man to be "intoxicated" with his wife's love, and warns him not to be "intoxicated" by a forbidden woman, then says that in his folly he finally "goes astray" to his ruin.
A cause-and-effect form of the verb means to make someone else stray, that is, to mislead or lead astray, as when the law curses anyone who sends a blind man the wrong way.
The word is close to two others that also mean "go astray": a narrower verb (שׁגג) reserved almost entirely for sin committed unknowingly, and a broader verb (תעה) for aimless wandering. This verb sits between them, carrying both the idea of drifting off course and the vivid physical pictures of reeling and being carried away.