maḥats

• Means to shatter or crush, so the blow breaks the body apart rather than merely landing; it pictures a wound that smashes bone.Num 24:8Job 5:18
• Most often aimed at the head or skull, the decisive spot where a single crushing stroke finishes an enemy.Jdg 5:26Psa 68:21Psa 110:6Hab 3:13
• Belongs to poetry and mostly has God as the one who strikes, so it carries the weight of divine victory and even the power to wound and then heal.Deu 32:39Psa 18:38

• Both describe delivering a violent blow to an enemy that wounds or kills.Psa 68:21Num 21:24

• The everyday, all-purpose word for striking, covering everything from one person hitting another to a single fatal blow.Exo 2:12Exo 21:15
• Routinely means to defeat an army or conquer in battle, summing up whole military campaigns in one verb.Gen 14:15Num 21:24
• Used for God striking with plagues, such as turning the Nile to blood, killing the firstborn, or sending pestilence.Exo 7:20Exo 12:29Num 14:12

• Measured by the grievous wound the blow inflicts: a body struck down so it cannot rise, a wound only God can also heal.Psa 18:38Deu 32:39
• Almost always God as the warrior, striking his enemies with a decisive, deadly blow that shatters the head or crushes rulers.Psa 68:21Psa 110:5

• Both can name a violent, deadly strike against a person: in Jael's killing of Sisera each verb describes a single blow, one the hammering stroke and the other the shattering of his temple.Jdg 5:26

• Fixes on the pounding, hammering action of the blow itself, often with a tool: a smith beating metal, workmen swinging axes and hammers against carved wood.Isa 41:7Psa 74:6
• Can name a blow that does little or no lasting harm, from the drumming beat of galloping hooves to a beating the victim barely feels.Jdg 5:22Pro 23:35

• This blow shatters something hard instead of making a hole through soft flesh: a skull, a temple, a hip, a set of bones. Jael crushes Sisera's head with a tent peg, Balaam's blessing sets the blow beside broken bones, and God shatters the head of his enemies.Jdg 5:26Num 24:8Psa 68:21
• God is almost always the one who strikes, so the shattering is his own act of rescue or judgment rather than a soldier's work. He shatters Rahab, the proud power of the sea, he breaks the hips of those who rise against Levi, and he strikes down kings on the day of his anger.Job 26:12Deu 33:11Psa 110:5
• Because the striker is God, the same hand that shatters can also heal, and scripture names the two together in one breath. "I wound and I heal" stands in the song of Moses, and Job is told that the one who wounds also binds up.Deu 32:39Job 5:18
• A crushed head stands for the collapse of a whole people, so the word belongs to songs of victory rather than to the report of one man's death. The skulls of Moab are crushed, rulers over a wide land are shattered, and the head of the house of the wicked is struck down.Num 24:17Psa 110:6Hab 3:13

• Both words name a killing blow struck in war, with the victim dropping dead where he stands. Babylon's slain lie run through in her streets, and kings are shattered on the day of the Lord's anger.Jer 51:4Psa 110:5
• English Bibles often render both with "wound", which can make a deadly stroke sound survivable. Jeremiah speaks of men left "wounded", meaning run through, and David says he "wounded" his enemies so that they could not rise.Jer 37:102Sa 22:39

• The blow is a thrust that drives a blade or spear straight through a body, so the victim is left run through rather than broken apart. Phinehas drives one spear through two people at once, and Babylon's dead lie in her streets as people who have been run through.Num 25:8Jer 51:4
• A human hand always holds the weapon, and the killing happens close up, so it can even be asked for as a favor or ordered as a family duty. Abimelech and Saul each beg an armor bearer to run them through, and parents are told to run their own son through if he prophesies falsely.Jdg 9:541Sa 31:4Zec 13:3
• The word also names the victim afterward, the one who has been pierced, a figure who stays in view once the blow has landed. Zechariah's mourners look on the one they pierced, and Lamentations describes people wasted by famine as though they had been run through.Zec 12:10Lam 4:9

• Means to strike a violent, crushing blow that wounds or shatters a body: smashing a head, piercing through, breaking in pieces. It always involves bodily force, never the quiet erasure of a record.Jdg 5:26Psa 68:21Hab 3:13
• Pictures God as a warrior who strikes down enemies in battle, shattering their heads and wounding their loins so they cannot rise.Num 24:8Deu 33:11Psa 110:5
• Pairs wounding with healing as a single divine act: the same God who wounds also binds up, so the blow is something a body can suffer and recover from.Deu 32:39Job 5:18

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• Means to wipe or blot something out so it leaves no trace: erasing a name, a record, or a memory rather than striking a body. God threatens to wipe humanity off the face of the ground and to blot out the remembrance of a people.Gen 7:23Exo 17:14Deu 9:14
• Used for erasing guilt and sin, as if scrubbing a written charge off a page. The psalmist asks God to blot out his transgressions, and God promises to wipe away sins like a cloud.Psa 51:1Psa 51:9Isa 43:25
• Can describe simple physical wiping clean of a surface, with no violence at all: wiping the mouth, or wiping a dish.Pro 30:202Ki 21:13