A BOND — from asar, to bind; a self-imposed restriction taken on by oath, distinct from an ordinary vow (a POSITIVE promise to do something) in that an issar is usually a binding renunciation, an oath NOT to do something. The word governs Numbers 30 (now on these pages), where a man 'binds a bond' (le'esor issar, v3) upon his soul — a cognate accusative, verb and noun sharing one root, found in only that one verse of the whole Hebrew Bible — and the noun recurs through nearly every verse of the chapter's law on who may override such a bond and who may not. ⚠ NWT renders it more explicitly, 'a vow of abstinence', which is semantically precise but breaks the wordplay a bare 'bond' preserves; KJV, ASV and Geneva all keep 'bond', which this translation follows. → first discussed at Num 30:3