to tear down: to demolish something built, reducing a structure to rubble
This is the standard Hebrew verb for knocking down something that was built up. Its natural objects are constructed things: altars, houses, city walls, towers, and the platforms and shrines of pagan worship. The picture is not a gentle dismantling but a forceful reduction to a heap of stones, wood, and dust, often as an act of judgment, conquest, or religious reform.
From that core the word stretches in two directions. It can describe breaking apart hard things that are not buildings at all, such as a clay oven, a cliff face, or the teeth in a mouth, where the same idea of shattering something solid carries over. And it can be used as a vivid image for ruining a person or a nation, where God or an enemy tears someone down the way a wrecking crew levels a building.
The word keeps strong company. Hebrew writers often pair it with verbs for overthrowing and uprooting, especially when a prophet pictures God dismantling kingdoms before he rebuilds and replants them. Even in those figurative uses, the demolition image stays in view: what is being torn down was once standing, and now it lies in ruins.