H4229 — מָחָה (machah)¶

Core Data¶

Strong's: H4229
Original: מָחָה
Transliteration: machah
Pronunciation: maw-khaw'
Part of Speech: Verb (primitive root)
Occurrences: 32 unique verses (50 tokens) across 12 books
First Occurrence: Gen 6:7 — "And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth"
Hapax Legomenon: No

Lexicon Definition¶

A primitive root; properly, to stroke or rub; by implication, to erase; also to smooth (as if with oil), i.e. grease or make fat; also to touch, i.e. reach to: — abolish, blot out, destroy, full of marrow, put out, reach unto, utterly, wipe (away, out).

Verb Stem Distribution¶

Stem	Count	Typical Meaning
Qal	23	wipe out, blot out, destroy (active erasure by agent — usually God)
Niphal	9	be blotted out, be wiped away, be destroyed (passive — name/sin/person removed)
Hiphil	3	cause to be wiped out (Jer 18:23; Neh 13:14; Prov 31:3)
Pual	1	be full of marrow (Isa 25:6 — "fat things full of marrow")

Tallied from hebrew_parser.py --lemma output. Qal dominates (64%), used for God's active erasure of sin, people, or names. Niphal (25%) marks the passive result — things being blotted out. Hiphil (8%) is rare, appearing in petitions and warnings. The Pual participle in Isa 25:6 reflects the physical root meaning "to rub/smooth" rather than the dominant "erase" sense.

Translation Distribution (KJV)¶

Translation	Verses	%
blot out / blotted out / blot me	~15	47%
destroy / destroyed	~5	16%
wipe / wipe away / wiped away	~5	16%
put out	2	6%
full of marrow	1	3%
reach unto	1	3%
abolished	1	3%
Other	2	6%

Distribution by Book¶

Book	Count	Per 100 Verses
Psalms	6	0.2
Deuteronomy	4	0.4
Isaiah	4	0.3
Genesis	3	0.2
Exodus	3	0.2
Proverbs	3	0.3
2 Kings	2	0.3
Numbers	2	0.2
Nehemiah	2	0.5
Judges	1	0.2
Jeremiah	1	0.1
Ezekiel	1	0.1

Spread across 12 books with no single dominant concentration. Highest density in Nehemiah (0.5/100v). The word appears across Torah, Prophets, and Writings, indicating broad usage rather than genre restriction. Absent from the historical books except Judges and 2 Kings.

Semantic Categories¶

1. Divine Erasure of Sin / Transgression¶

Psalm 51:1 — "according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions"
Psalm 51:9 — "Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities"
Isaiah 43:25 — "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake"
Isaiah 44:22 — "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins"

2. Erasure from God's Book / Record¶

Exodus 32:32 — "blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written"
Exodus 32:33 — "Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book"
Psalm 69:28 — "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous"

3. Destruction of People / Living Things (Flood, Warfare)¶

Genesis 6:7 — "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth"
Genesis 7:4 — "every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth"
Genesis 7:23 — "every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground"
Judges 21:17 — "that a tribe be not destroyed from Israel"

4. Blotting Out Names / Memory¶

Deuteronomy 9:14 — "blot out their name from under heaven"
Deuteronomy 25:19 — "thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven"
Psalm 9:5 — "thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever"
Psalm 109:13 — "in the generation following let their name be blotted out"
2 Kings 14:27 — "the LORD said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven"

5. Erasure of Written Curses (Ritual)¶

Numbers 5:23 — "the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water"

6. Physical Wiping / Wiping Away¶

2 Kings 21:13 — "I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down"
Isaiah 25:8 — "the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces"
Proverbs 30:20 — "she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness"
Nehemiah 13:14 — "wipe not out my good deeds that I have done"

7. Physical Root Sense — Smoothing / Making Fat¶

Isaiah 25:6 — "a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow" (Pual participle — from root sense "to rub/smooth")

Common Collocations¶

Word	Strong's	Co-occurrences	Typical Pattern
שֵׁם (shem)	H8034	6x	"blot out the name" — erasure of memory/identity
סֵפֶר (sepher)	H5612	6x	"blot out of the book" — removal from divine record
חַטָּאָה (chattaah)	H2403	6x	"blot out sin/transgression" — forgiveness formula
עָשָׂה (asah)	H6213	6x	"what they have done" — deeds subject to erasure
שָׁמַיִם (shamayim)	H8064	7x	"from under heaven" — total erasure formula
פָּנִים (paniym)	H6440	8x	"from the face of" — erasure from a surface
כָּתַב (kathab)	H5789	5x	"write...blot out" — paired writing/erasing actions
עָוֺן (avon)	H5771	4x	"blot out iniquity" — forgiveness petition
זָכַר (zakar)	H2142	3x	"remember...blot out" — antithetical pair

Word Family / Cognates¶

H4229 is listed as a primitive root with no derivational parent. No cognate nouns or adjectives are attested in the OT from this root.

Easily Confused Words¶

Word	Strong's	Shared Translation	Key Difference
שָׁמַד (shamad)	H8045	"destroy"	shamad = annihilate/exterminate (people, nations); machah = erase/wipe (records, names, sins) — shamad is physical destruction, machah is erasure
אָבַד (abad)	H6	"destroy"	abad = perish, go to ruin (often intransitive); machah = actively wipe/erase (always transitive in Qal)
כָּפַר (kaphar)	H3722	both address sin-removal	kaphar = cover/atone (ritual atonement, requires sacrifice); machah = erase/blot out (complete removal of record)
דָּעַךְ (daak)	H1846	"put out"	daak = extinguish (fire, lamp); machah = wipe/erase (record, name, person)

Semantic Domain¶

SDBH Domains: - Clean (002001001012) — erasure as purification - Non-Exist (002002002006) — causing something to cease existing - Innocent (002003003015) — blotting out guilt restores innocence

LXX Mapping¶

Greek Equivalent	Strong's	Co-occurrences	PMI	Notes
ἐξαλείφω (exaleipho)	G1813	22x	8.84	Primary equivalent — "smear out, obliterate, erase"
βίβλος (biblos)	G976	3x	7.47	Co-occurs in "book" contexts, not a translation
ἀνομία (anomia)	G458	5x	4.23	Co-occurs in sin contexts

The LXX strongly favors ἐξαλείφω (G1813) as the translation for machah — 22 of ~32 occurrences (69%). This is a tight one-to-one correspondence. G1813 is itself a compound (ek + aleipho = "smear out/away"), preserving the physical root sense of machah ("to rub/stroke" → "to erase"). The same Greek word reappears in Rev 3:5, 7:17, 21:4 for "blot out" and "wipe away tears."