captivity
she.vi denotes people taken as captives, their condition of being carried away, and communities identified by that experience.
The term most often marks the condition or destination of being carried away, including people sent into it and restoration from it. It also denotes captives as persons or a group, and can identify people who had come back from that condition.
Senses in use
-
Being carried away or held in captivity · dominant
The singular noun marks the outcome or destination of defeat: in Jeremiah 20:6 the APB renders that Pashhur and his household “will go into captivity,” while Jeremiah 30:10 speaks of offspring returning from “the land of their captivity.” In Jeremiah 15:2 and Ezekiel 12:11, it stands in repeated alternatives or directions alongside death and the sword, showing a condition to which people are assigned or into which they go.
-
Captives taken in conflict · common
The noun can designate those taken by an opposing force. In Deuteronomy 21:10 the construct form occurs in the instruction following victory over an enemy, where the APB renders “you shall take his captives captive”; Numbers 31:12 similarly distinguishes “the captives” from prey and spoil. Isaiah 49:24 and Judges 5:12 place the term in questions or commands about captives being delivered or led away.
-
People identified as returning from captivity · occasional
In several clauses, the noun identifies a body of people by their prior displacement and return. Ezra 2:1 describes those who “came up from the captivity,” and Nehemiah 8:17 identifies an assembly as those “returning from the captivity”; Ezra 3:8 likewise locates participants in Jerusalem among those who had come from it.
In the Anselm Project Bible: Across the verses, the APB commonly uses “captivity” or “captives,” and it also describes people as going into it, coming from it, or returning from it. These renderings present the verse-level contexts rather than supplying a fixed word-for-word equivalent.