mashḥit

The standard lexica treat מַשְׁחִית as a noun of the root שׁחת formed with the m- prefix, which in Hebrew yields both abstract nouns of action and nouns of instrument, and they distribute its twelve occurrences across that range. BDB divides the entry into ruin or destruction (Exodus 12:13; 2 Chronicles 20:23; 22:4; Ezekiel 5:16; 9:6; 21:36 [English 21:31]; 25:15; Daniel 10:8), a destroying agency in genitive phrases (Proverbs 18:9; Jeremiah 51:25), a trap (Jeremiah 5:26), and the toponym הַר הַמַּשְׁחִית of 2 Kings 23:13, commonly explained as a polemical distortion of an older name for the same ridge. HALOT and DCH follow a comparable division. The gloss "trap" at Jeremiah 5:26 rests on the parallel with the bird catchers (יְקוּשִׁים) in the same clause and is not universally accepted, since the clause is textually awkward. The rendering of Exodus 12:13 turns on whether לְמַשְׁחִית is read as expressing purpose ("so as to destroy") or as naming the agent that Exodus 12:23 calls הַמַּשְׁחִית, which is a participle of שׁחת rather than this noun; the agent reading is therefore an inference from narrative context. The hapax מַשְׁחֵת at Ezekiel 9:1 carries the same lexical gloss and is sometimes treated as a variant vocalization of the same noun.