to tear: to rip something apart, most often clothing torn as an outburst of grief or shock
At its core this verb describes the violent ripping of something, usually cloth. By far its commonest use is the ancient gesture of tearing one's own clothes, which a person did the instant grief, horror, or alarm struck: a father hearing his son is dead, a king hearing blasphemy or doom, a mourner at a funeral. The act was sudden and bodily, a way of putting inner anguish on display in a single irreversible motion.
From that physical act the word stretches in two directions. It can name the ordinary tearing of material things: an altar splitting apart, a window cut into a wall, a robe ripped to pieces. And in the hands of the prophets it becomes a powerful image for God ripping a kingdom out of a ruler's hands and giving it to someone else, sometimes acted out by literally tearing a garment into pieces.
The senses below all keep the same hard, decisive feel of ripping. What changes is what gets torn and why: a grieving person's own clothing, a physical object, or a kingdom seized away by divine decree.