to throw into confusion, so routing an enemy or crushing it to pieces.
Almost every time this verb appears, God is the one doing it and an enemy army is on the receiving end. The LORD throws a hostile force into sudden, blind panic so that it collapses, turns on itself, or flees to its death: the Egyptians floundering at the sea, the kings routed at Gibeon, Sisera's chariots thrown into chaos, the Philistines scattered by a thunderclap. It is a signature word for the divine warrior who wins a battle by unmaking the enemy's nerve rather than by Israel's sword.
The confusion in view is not mental fog or mild embarrassment but a violent, disorienting terror that shatters a battle line. Deuteronomy 7:23 pairs the verb with its matching noun for panic (מְהוּמָה), promising that God will throw the nations into great confusion until they are destroyed, catching both the cause and the effect in one breath.
A smaller group of uses turns the same crushing force onto things rather than armies: a farmer's wheel grinding grain, or Babylon crushing Israel to pieces like a swallowed meal. Here the word means to grind or wear down to ruin. The two streams meet at a single idea, that something is thrown into such violent commotion that it breaks apart.