to tear down: to pull a standing structure or settled order apart so it collapses into ruin.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the wrecking-ball word. Its plain picture is a builder's work run in reverse: walls pulled down, altars knocked over, cities and strongholds leveled into rubble. It is the natural opposite of the ordinary word for building, and the two are repeatedly paired, most memorably in the prophet's commission to pluck up and tear down, then to build and to plant.
From that concrete core the word stretches to bringing down anything that stands. God overthrows his enemies, topples nations, and pulls a proud official out of his post; folly tears down a household; corruption ruins a whole land. The image stays the same throughout: something built up is brought crashing down, and often the point is that it cannot simply be put back.
A handful of times the word turns intransitive and describes people forcing their way through a barrier rather than knocking the barrier flat. At Sinai the crowd is warned not to break through the boundary set around the mountain to get a look at God. The underlying idea is the same violent breach, here aimed at a limit the people are pressing against.
Nuances
1ato tear down or demolish a physical structure: a wall, altar, building, or city.
keeps the concrete image of a structure collapsing even when the target is a person or nation, so an overthrow is pictured as a building brought downExo 15:7
Both
both can describe toppling a kingdom or settled orderPro 29:4
Only overthrow
the English word drifts toward political seizure of power and can lose the picture of physical demolition
“break down”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“pull down”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How haras differs from similar Hebrew words
נָתַץto pull down or break up a structure stone by stone; it overlaps heavily with this word for demolishing altars and walls, while this word leans more toward the wholesale collapse of what stood.
Reaches beyond buildings to the overthrow of whole nations, kingdoms, and the mountains themselves, the sweeping undoing of what stands. It is the destroying half of the build-and-plant pair, what God tears down so that nothing can be rebuilt.Jer 1:10Job 12:14Exo 15:7
Carries a force the other word never has, to break through or press past a barrier rather than knock something flat. At Sinai the danger is that the people will force their way through to gaze on God.Exo 19:21Exo 19:24
Both
Both name the demolishing of city walls and fortifications when a place falls under judgment, the defenses thrown down so the city lies open.Ezk 26:12Ezk 26:9
Both stand for God's work of tearing down, set side by side as the destructive act he performs over a people before any rebuilding.Jer 31:28Jer 18:7
The verb of choice for pulling down pagan altars, sacred pillars, and idols when worship is purged. Gideon pulls down the altar of Baal, and Josiah's reform repeatedly pulls down the high places and shrines.Jdg 6:28Deu 7:52Ki 23:12
Used for taking apart a specific built structure, a house or a tower, dismantling it stone from stone. The defiled house is pulled down, and Gideon breaks down the tower of the city.Lev 14:45Jdg 8:9Jdg 8:17
פָּרַץto make a breach, to burst a wall open at a point; this word is the broader work of bringing the whole structure down rather than punching a gap in it.
Names the deliberate demolition of something built: walls, altars, cities, and strongholds are pulled down and leveled. The focus is on reducing a standing structure to ruin.Jdg 6:251Ki 18:30Ezk 26:12
Is the standard word for God's work of judgment that tears down nations and kingdoms, often paired with its opposite, to build and to plant.Jer 1:10Jer 24:6Lam 2:2
Pictures the collapse of what gives a society or a life its stability, so that foundations themselves give way and what is settled falls into ruin.Psa 11:3Pro 14:1Pro 29:4
Both
Both describe breaking down a city wall, and they appear side by side warning Israel not to force their way up Mount Sinai lest the LORD break out against them.Exo 19:24
Names rapid spreading and multiplying: people, flocks, and wealth burst outward in every direction and increase beyond their bounds.Gen 28:14Gen 30:30Exo 1:12
Describes God or a force suddenly bursting out against someone, a violent breach that springs open like floodwater through a dam.2Sa 5:202Sa 6:8Psa 106:29
Pictures a gap forced open in a barrier so that what was enclosed is no longer protected: a hedge or wall is broken into and left with a breach.Psa 80:12Ecc 10:8Pro 25:28
שָׁמַדto exterminate or wipe out, focused on annihilating people or a nation; this word pictures the physical leveling of what they built, though both can describe a kingdom's end.
also names the lawful but tightly limited act of taking a borrower's property in pledge as security for a debt, a meaning the other word never hasExo 22:26Deu 24:6
can describe the pangs of childbirth or conceiving trouble, picturing a body gripped and twisted by laborPsa 7:14Sng 8:5
shades from physical wrecking toward moral wrongdoing, so it can mean acting corruptly against God or a covenantNeh 1:7Job 34:31
tears down what has been built: walls, altars, and cities broken apart until the standing structure is rubbleEzk 26:4Jdg 6:25Exo 23:24
pictures a collapse of stone and foundation, so it reaches even the underpinnings a thing rests onPsa 11:3Pro 14:1
Both
both name God's judgment as the undoing of what he once established, paired as complementary images in Jeremiah's formula of tearing down alongside building and plantingJer 45:4
both stand together in the commission to pull down and to uproot, one act of demolition set beside the otherJer 1:10
It names taking a built thing apart until it lies on the ground: an altar, a plastered wall, a stone fence around a vineyard, a grain store.Jdg 6:25Ezk 13:14Pro 24:31Jol 1:17
It is the standing opposite of building, and the two verbs are set side by side in one breath, so what is pulled down is the sort of thing that could be put up again.Job 12:14Jer 1:10Mal 1:4Pro 14:1
When a conquering army's work is listed step by step, this is the word for the walls specifically, while separate words carry off the wealth and the goods.Ezk 26:12Jer 50:15
It stretches to forcing a way past a barrier rather than wrecking anything: at Sinai the danger is that the people will break through the line set around the mountain.Exo 19:21Exo 19:24
Both
Both are used for flattening a place's defenses so that it can no longer hold out, and both take fortresses as their object.Mic 5:11Lam 2:2Hos 10:14
Both are used for wrecking the fittings of false worship, whether an altar or the sacred standing stones beside it.Jdg 6:25Exo 23:24Hos 10:2
With either word the LORD himself can be the one acting, and he acts against his own people as readily as against foreign nations.Jer 45:4Lam 2:17Jer 25:36Jer 51:55
It doubles as a name for the attacker himself: the raider who comes in peacetime, the robber who works by night, the one whose whole trade is stripping places bare.Job 15:21Oba 1:5Isa 33:1Jer 48:32
Its most common shape is a bare announcement that a place is finished, a cry raised over a named city with nothing said about how it fell.Isa 23:1Nam 3:7Jer 48:1
What it ruins need not be built at all: open fields, the grain crop, grazing land, the tents of a camp.Jol 1:10Jer 25:36Jer 4:20
It is used of violence against people, from enemies closing in on a worshipper to a son who handles his own father roughly.Psa 17:9Pro 19:26
haras in the other biblical languages
κατασκάπτωGreek“to ruin”the Greek word for razing a structure to the ground, the closest counterpart for tearing down buildings and walls.
καταλύωGreek“to destroy/lodge”the Greek word for taking a structure apart or demolishing it, used of pulling down the temple stone from stone.
It can mean to break through or burst past a set boundary rather than to tear down a structure, as when the LORD warns the people not to force their way up the mountain toward him.Exo 19:21Exo 19:24
It is one of the fixed verbs in the prophetic judgment formula that pairs building up with tearing down, marking a commission to uproot and demolish nations before replanting them.Jer 1:10
Both
Both words describe pulling down a built structure, whether a building, an altar, or a house.Luk 12:18Jdg 6:25Pro 14:1
Both describe overthrowing someone in power and bringing them down from their position or office.Luk 1:52Act 19:27Isa 22:19
Both describe destroying an established power along with its defenses, wiping out nations or throwing down strongholds and walls.Act 13:192Co 10:4Lam 2:2Jer 50:15
It can mean simply to take something down from a height without any violence, most often lowering a dead body from the cross for burial. The action is careful, not destructive.Mrk 15:46Luk 23:53Act 13:29
What scholars say about haras
In the standard lexicons (BDB, HALOT, DCH) and in TDOT, the verb means "to tear down, break down, demolish," used in the qal of walls, altars, fortifications, cities, and houses, and figuratively of overthrowing persons, nations, and the established order. It is the conventional antonym of "to build" and the two are paired programmatically in Jeremiah's call (Jer 1:10; 24:6; 31:28; 42:10). BDB and HALOT note a separate intransitive nuance "to break through, press through" a boundary in Exodus 19:21, 24, where the people are warned not to force past the limit set around Sinai. The niphal is passive ("be torn down, lie in ruins") and the piel intensive. The senses are not regarded as homonyms but as one verb's literal core and its figurative extensions.
Sources
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. הרסlexicon
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. הרסlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. הרסlexicon
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), s.v. הרסdictionary