אָסִיר
captive
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 7 times (54%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 5 times (38%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 13 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H615 appears — 13 distinct verses across 7 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Genesis 2 verses
- Genesis 39:20 אֲסִירֵ֥י n c mp cs Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were bound, and he was there in custody.
- Genesis 39:22 הָ֣/אֲסִירִ֔ם ptcl def.art + n c mp The keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever they did there, he was the doer of it.
Judges 2 verses
- Judges 16:21 ה/אסירים ptcl def.art + n c mp The Philistines laid hold on him, and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison-house.
- Judges 16:25 ה/אסירים ptcl def.art + n c mp It happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. They called for Samson out of the prison-house; and he made sport before them. They set him between the pillars:
Job 1 verse
Psalms 4 verses
- Psalms 68:6 אֲ֭סִירִים n c mp God sets the lonely in families. He brings out the prisoners with singing, But the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land.
- Psalms 69:33 אֲ֝סִירָ֗י/ו n c mp cs + sfx pers 3ms For Yahweh hears the needy, And doesn't despise his captive people.
- Psalms 102:20 אָסִ֑יר n c ms To hear the groans of the prisoner; To free those who are condemned to death;
- Psalms 107:10 אֲסִירֵ֖י n c mp cs Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, Being bound in affliction and iron,
Isaiah 1 verse
Lamentations 1 verse
Zechariah 2 verses
- Zechariah 9:11 אֲסִירַ֨יִ/ךְ֙ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2fs As for you also, Because of the blood of your covenant, I have set free your prisoners from the pit in which is no water.
- Zechariah 9:12 אֲסִירֵ֖י n c mp cs Turn to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope! Even today I declare that I will restore double to you.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
אסיר (ʼâçîyr) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “captive.” It first appears in Genesis 39:20. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 13 verses — uncommon. Psalms dominates its distribution — 4 of 13 verses. Sharing its root, it stands alongside אסר, אסור and אסר. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H615 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 13
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,001
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,001 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 13 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 13 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 46%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 38%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 15%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Prisoners 5×, All the prisoners 2×, Prisoner 2×
- American Standard Version: Prisoners 4×, All the prisoners 2×, Prisoner 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Prisoners 5×, Captives 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Prisoners 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H615 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H615 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H615 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H615 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- prisoner, captive, bondman
Word origin
n.m. Gn 39:20 bondman, prisoner (Arabic أَسِيرٌ, Aramaic ܐܰܣܝܺܪܳܐ, MI אסר)—א׳ abs. ψ 79:11; 102:21; pl. אֲסִירִם Gn 39:22 +, cf. Ju 16:21, 25 Kt; cstr. אֲסִירֵי ψ 107:10 +, Gn 39:20 Qr; אֲסִירָיו ψ 69:34 +, etc.;—prisoner Gn 39:20, 22 (J), elsewhere only poetic; Is 14:17; as having rest in grave from task-master Jb 3:18; especially as obj. of divine compassion ψ 68:7 (‖ יָחִיד), 69:34 (‖ אֶבְיוֹן); אֶנְקַת א׳ 79:11; 102:21 (both ‖ בְּנֵי תְמוּתָה), 107:10 א׳ עֳנִי וּבַרְזֶל (‖ ישְׁבֵי חֹשֶׁךְ וְצַלְמָ֑וֶת); cf. א׳ אָ֑רֶץ La 3:34; specif. of liberated exiles of Isr. Zc 9:11, called captives of hope א׳ הַתִּקְוָה v 12.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אסר (ʼâçar) (H631) — to bind.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
אָסִיר
- prisoner. — Pl. אֲסִירִין. Kel. XII, 1 קורות … של א׳ prisoners’ stocks (a metal frame in which the prisoner’s feet were shut up).
אָסִיר ²
- (אסר)
- 1. as preced., imprisoned, prisoner. Targ. Gen. XL, 3; a. fr.
- 2. (part. pass. of אֲסַר) tied, connected. Fem. אֲסִירָא. Targ. Y. II, Gen. XXV, 1.
- 3. forbidden. Targ. Y. Num. XXV, 6.—Pl. אֲסִירִין, אֲסִירֵי, אֲסִירַיָּא; fem. אֲסִירָן. Targ. Gen. XL, 3; 5; a. fr.—Targ. II Sam. III, 34.
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 11 distinct written forms H615 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֲסִירֵ֖י | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 107:10 | 2 |
| ה/אסירים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 16:21 | 2 |
| אֲ֝סִירָ֗י/ו | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 69:33 | 1 |
| אֲ֭סִירִים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 68:6 | 1 |
| אֲסִ֥ירֵי | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Lamentations 3:34 | 1 |
| אֲסִירִ֣ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Job 3:18 | 1 |
| אֲסִירֵ֥י | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Genesis 39:20 | 1 |
| אֲסִירַ֨יִ/ךְ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Zechariah 9:11 | 1 |
| אֲסִירָ֖י/ו | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 14:17 | 1 |
| אָסִ֑יר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 102:20 | 1 |
| הָ֣/אֲסִירִ֔ם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 39:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H615, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 13 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
