a blow and what it leaves behind: a strike, the wound it makes, a crushing defeat in battle, or an affliction sent by God
This word names a striking and its aftermath in one breath. It comes from the common verb meaning to strike or hit, and it keeps that whole arc: the act of hitting, the mark left on the body, and the larger ruin a blow can cause. Because Hebrew lets one word carry the cause and the result together, the same term covers a measured beating, an open sore, a lost battle, and a calamity from heaven.
The four shades are not separate words but one idea seen from different distances. Up close it is the swing of the rod or the lash that lands on a back. Closer still, on the body, it is the bruise or running wound that swing produces. Pulled back to a battlefield, it is an army struck down, a slaughter so heavy the writer calls it a great blow. Pulled back further, to the whole life of a nation, it is sickness, ruin, or disaster understood as God striking his people.
Context usually makes the shade plain. A number of lashes points to the act; a body that is sore and untended points to the wound; the phrase a great blow with the verb to strike points to a defeat; a list of diseases or a charge that the Lord has struck points to an affliction. The senses also blur on purpose, especially in the prophets, where a nation's military defeat, its open wound, and the judgment behind it are deliberately one and the same.