OT: Hebrew question

A friend asks on Facebook: "Okay, I *KNOW* there are some biblical Hebrew scholars out there reading this, or people who can pass it on to same: The word 'asir' means 'one who is bound' (i.e., prisoner). What's the Hebrew word for a PEOPLE who are bound?"

Does anyone have an answer to that? Is there one, other than the plural of asir (asirim)? How about עֶ֤֥בֶד (slave), which is used in the singular to address Israel as a people, "you were slaves in Egypt"?

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Comments

Brian Davidson

In Isa 61:1 שְׁבוּיִם is parallel with אֲסוּרִים (HALOT).

See also שִׁבְיָה (HALOT).

See the verb and the cognates of שׁבה in BDB.

David Paul

Not to be "tongue-in-cheek" about it, but in a very real sense עַמִּים (`ammiym) would be that word, which is the plural of עַם (`am = people). There is no such thing as people who are not bound. As the great Jewish sage Rabbi B. Dylan once said, "Everybody's gotta serve somebody."

This sentiment is echoed by Paul in Rom. 6:16, 17, 18, 19, 20. There is no such thing as freedom, in the absolute sense. The freedom that Yeishuu`a speaks of is concurrently "freedom from sin and death" and "the light yoke of Tohraah". Being submitted to and bound by Tohraah is freedom because it is, by ontological definition, the path of life. Paul's characterization of Tohraah as bondage is a tautology, because literally everything is bondage of one sort or another. The same, of course, goes for the saying that salvation is by grace. That is a tautology as well for the same reason. By onotolgical definition, everything that has been created is grace, which includes Satan. The Law also is grace. It is by the grace of Tohraah that YHWH provides a mechanism for those created in His image to bear the fruit of righteousness. Isa. 8:16

The idea that Yeishuu`a came as Messiah to perfectly keep the Law and then die on the cross is a grave misconception. Rather, He came as Messiah to perfectly keep the Law BY dying on the cross. The cross only exists AS THE LAW...it can't possibly have any other existence. Yeishuu`a HAD to die on the cross because the Law demanded it. Any conceptualization of the cross as somehow extra-legal is a legal fiction.

So, anyway, `ammiym is your word. [Y]