Archaic KJV Word
Gather
Modern equivalent: collect
What Was Lost
The exile promise. 'I will gather you from all the nations where I have scattered you' was one of the most powerful promises in the prophets. Gathering was not logistics but covenant faithfulness -- God collecting His scattered, exiled, broken people and bringing them home. Jesus's hen-gathering-chicks image was this entire theology compressed into one sentence.
Closest Survivor in Modern English
gathering (still used for church meetings but the exile-restoration dimension is lost)
Peak Usage (1611)
KJV Matthew 23:37 -- 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens'
Died still used but secularized (~1900)
Hebrew qabats/asaph ('to gather the scattered/restore the exiled/bring home the lost') was secularized from a covenant-restoration act to merely 'collect things in one place.'
What Replaced It
“collect”
Impersonal accumulation; gathering was the compassionate act of bringing the lost and scattered home
“assemble”
Organizational; gathering was God's covenant promise to restore what exile had scattered
“bring together”
Flat description; gathering was saturated with exile-and-return theology