To WIPE OUT, blot, erase — what you do to WRITING. It is used of erasing a name from under heaven (Deuteronomy 29:20), of blotting a name from a book (Exodus 32:32-33, already on these pages), and of wiping a dish (2 Kings 21:13). ⚠ That Exodus scene is the word's most startling use anywhere: Moses offers his own name to be machah'd from God's book if it will save the people, and Jehovah's answer keeps the verb but narrows its target — only the one who actually sinned will be blotted out, not a willing substitute. ⚠ Psalm 51:3 and 51:11 both ask God to machah the speaker's rebellions, which makes the request administrative rather than emotional: cancel the entry, not feel differently about it. ⭐ Numbers 34:11 is the exception that shows it is really two words: there a boundary line goes down and strikes the shoulder of the sea of Chinnereth, and the verb is this one. Searched consonantally, the exact form u-machah stands in four verses of the whole Hebrew Bible — Numbers 5:23, Deuteronomy 29:19 and Isaiah 25:8, all of them erasing something, and this one, reaching a lakeshore. The lexicons list a second root meaning to reach or extend; the whole shelf takes the geographical sense there without hesitating, and so does this translation. ⭐ Deuteronomy 9:14 (already on these pages) is worth setting beside the Exodus scene above, because the verb has changed hands: in Exodus 32:32-33 the verb passes between two mouths in two verses — Moses offers his own name out of God's book, and God answers by aiming the same verb at whoever actually sinned; in Deuteronomy's retelling the target has changed again, from a name in a book to a name 'from under the heavens', and from one man to a nation. ⭐ Deuteronomy 25 (now on these pages) uses the verb at both its ends, in opposite directions: at v6 a levirate son is raised so that a dead man's name is not blotted out from Israel, and at v19 Israel is told to blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven — Exodus 17:14's oath with the subject changed from God to the nation. → first discussed at Psalms 51:3