paḥat

The lexicons are agreed. HALOT, BDB and DCH all gloss פַּחַת as "pit, hole in the ground", and none of them posits a second homonym; the derivation is left uncertain, since a root pht "dig out" is inferred from cognate evidence rather than attested as a verb in Biblical Hebrew. The distribution is narrow and heavily formulaic: two narrative uses in 2 Samuel (17:9, plural, of terrain; 18:17, of the forest pit that receives Absalom's body), one topographical use at Jeremiah 48:28, and the remainder in the fixed tricolon פַּחַד וָפַחַת וָפָח (Isaiah 24:17, unpacked in 24:18, repeated verbatim at Jeremiah 48:43 with its expansion at 48:44, and its first two members reused at Lamentations 3:47). The paronomasia is generally taken to be the reason the noun survives chiefly inside that formula. The direction of literary dependence between Isaiah 24 and Jeremiah 48 is debated in the commentary literature (Wildberger, Holladay), but the debate concerns priority and redaction, not the semantics of the noun, which is stable throughout. At Jeremiah 48:28 the phrase בְּעֶבְרֵי פִי־פָחַת is rendered variously "pit", "chasm" or "gorge"; the variation reflects the terrain being described and the parallel with סֶלַע in the same verse, not a separate lexical sense.