Lexicon

H7843 - shachath

Strong's: H7843 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: shaw-khath' Part of speech: verb Root: a primitive root OT occurrences: 136 verses in the Strong's-tagged KJV, with 147 tags. The KJV word carrying the tag is "destroy" 68 times, "destroyed" 20, "corrupted" 11, "corrupt" 10, "destroying" 5, "mar" 4, "destroyer" 3, "marred" 3, with a long tail of single and double renderings including "spoilers", "waster", "corrupters", "spilled", "battered" and "corruptly" (measured) Related noun: mashchit (H4889), "destruction, destroyer", 11 verses in the Strong's-tagged KJV (measured), which Strong's derives from this verb

Shachath means to ruin: to spoil a thing so that it no longer is what it was made to be. English needs two words to translate it, "corrupt" and "destroy", and the KJV uses both. The Hebrew uses one. That matters most in Genesis 6, where the same verb names what humanity had done to the earth and what God said he would do in the Flood.

Semantic range

Across the 136 verses the verb covers four overlapping senses:

To spoil or mar a thing. The potter's vessel "was marred in the hand of the potter" (Jeremiah 18:4); the buried girdle was "marred" (Jeremiah 13:7); "neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard" (Leviticus 19:27); the near kinsman fears he will "mar mine own inheritance" (Ruth 4:6); Israel must not "destroy the trees" of a besieged city (Deuteronomy 20:19). Nothing moral is in view; something good is being ruined.
To corrupt, morally. "Thy people... have corrupted themselves" at the golden calf (Exodus 32:7); "They have dealt corruptly with him, they are not his children" (Deuteronomy 32:5); "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt" (Psalm 14:1; repeated at Psalm 53:1). The person or people is the thing ruined, and they did it to themselves.
To destroy, in judgment or war. Sodom (Genesis 18:32; 19:13); the angel's hand over Jerusalem (2 Samuel 24:16); invading armies (Judges 6:4; 2 Kings 18:25).
The destroyer. Rendered in English as an agent of ruin: "the destroyer" at the Passover (Exodus 12:23); "a destroyer of nations" (Jeremiah 4:7); the Philistine "spoilers" (1 Samuel 13:17).

The thread through all four is the same: something is brought to ruin. Whether the result is called "corrupt" or "destroyed" depends on whether the English reader is looking at the cause or the outcome.

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Genesis 6: the earth corrupt, and God would destroy it

The verb carries the Flood narrative's central sentence, three verses in a row:

And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Genesis 6:11-13, ASV)

The KJV tagging puts shachath on "corrupt" in verse 11, on both "corrupt" and "corrupted" in verse 12, and on "destroy" in verse 13: four occurrences in three verses (measured). The narrator has already shown the earth ruined three times before God announces that he will ruin it. The same verb returns for the Flood itself, "to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life" (Genesis 6:17), and for the promise afterwards: "neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth" (Genesis 9:11; compare 9:15).

Three things follow.

Judgment ratifies what humanity had done. God does not take a sound world and break it. He confirms the ruin that "all flesh" had already brought on "their way". The punishment is described in the vocabulary of the crime.
The charge is named. Twice the text gives the content of the corruption: "the earth was filled with violence" (6:11, 6:13). The noun is chamas (H2555), tagged on "violence" in both verses. The Flood is not presented as caprice, but as judgment on a world saturated with violence.
A different verb sits beside it. The earlier announcement, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground" (Genesis 6:7), uses machah (H4229), and the KJV margin at 7:4 glosses that verb as "Heb. blot out". The Flood account uses both verbs: machah for wiping something off the face of the ground, shachath for bringing to ruin something already ruined.

This is the word-level answer to the charge that the Flood was arbitrary mass killing. See Flood Genocide Objection Defeater and Divine Wipeouts and Their Justification; for the narrative itself, Genesis Flood. The vocabulary does not by itself settle the geographical extent of the Flood, which is argued on other grounds.

Exodus 12: the destroyer

For Jehovah will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side-posts, Jehovah will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you. (Exodus 12:23, ASV)

The KJV tags "destroyer" here with shachath (measured); YLT renders the same word "the destruction". Ten verses earlier the promise is that "there shall no plague be upon you to destroy you" (Exodus 12:13), where the tag is the related noun mashchit (H4889).

The verse is careful about agency. Jehovah himself passes through to smite; Jehovah passes over the door; and Jehovah does not allow the destroyer to enter. The destroyer is not an independent evil power that God holds off with difficulty. It acts under his command and stops at his word, as with the angel over Jerusalem: "It is enough; now stay thy hand" (2 Samuel 24:16). The blood on the door is what marks the house as passed over. Hebrews takes it up: "By faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them" (Hebrews 11:28). See Exodus 12 and Angel of the LORD.

God who does not destroy

The same verb is used, negated, for some of the Old Testament's strongest statements of mercy:

Abraham's intercession for Sodom: "I will not destroy it for the ten's sake" (Genesis 18:32; see Genesis 18:25).
"But he, being merciful, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not" (Psalm 78:38).
"I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee" (Hosea 11:9).

Read with Genesis 6, this gives the full picture. The God who ratifies ruin is also the God who withholds it, and in both cases the verb is his.

Where the word decides a debate

"The Flood was genocide." The text does not present the Flood as the destruction of a good world, but as the judgment on an earth already "corrupt", "filled with violence", where "all flesh had corrupted their way". The objector can reject the verdict, but cannot say no reason is given. See Flood Genocide Objection Defeater.
"God is a destroyer, not a saviour." The Passover destroyer is the occasion of the first great act of deliverance: the blood is given so that the destroyer passes by. And the same verb, negated, carries Hosea 11:9.
"Atheism is morally neutral." Psalm 14:1 joins the fool's denial of God to shachath: "They are corrupt". The psalm's claim is not that every atheist is wicked, but that denying God and the ruin of human conduct belong together. See Atheism.
Sodom. The intercession of Genesis 18:32 shows the judge of all the earth willing to spare a city for ten righteous people. See Sodom and Gomorrah Objection Defeater.

Notable verses

The Flood

Genesis 6:11-13, corrupt, corrupted, destroy
Genesis 6:17, "to destroy all flesh"
Genesis 9:11, "neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth"

The destroyer

Exodus 12:23, the destroyer not suffered to enter
Exodus 12:13, no plague "to destroy you" (mashchit)
2 Samuel 24:16, "It is enough; now stay thy hand"
Hebrews 11:28, the destroyer of the firstborn

Moral corruption

Psalm 14:1; 53:1, the fool, "They are corrupt"
Deuteronomy 32:5, "They have dealt corruptly with him"
Exodus 32:7, the golden calf, "have corrupted themselves"

Mercy

Genesis 18:32, not for ten's sake
Psalm 78:38, "destroyed them not"
Hosea 11:9, "I am God, and not man"

Patristic note

Chrysostom quotes Genesis 6:12, "All flesh had corrupted his way", to argue that corruption in Scripture is sin, not the body or its natural acts: "it is not the act that is corruption, but the sin" (NPNF1 13, PDF p. 142).
Augustine reads the Passover typologically: the door-posts were sealed with the lamb's blood, "and that sealing... was said to keep away the destroyer from the houses that were sealed: Christ's seal drives away the destroyer from us, if we receive the Saviour into our hearts" (Tractates on John, Tractate 50, NPNF1 7, PDF p. 224).
Chrysostom on Hebrews 11:28: "If then the blood of a lamb preserved the Jews unhurt in the midst of the Egyptians, and under so great a destruction, much more will the blood of Christ save us" (Homilies on Hebrews, NPNF1 14, PDF p. 390).