To tear down
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The Hebrew verb natats describes tearing down, demolishing, shattering, or dismantling structures and objects. Torah texts command the removal of Canaanite altars, Judges narrates Gideon tearing down Baal's altar, Jeremiah's commission includes tearing down alongside building and planting, and the fall of Jerusalem includes enemy armies breaking its walls.
Reader summary
Full entry for נָתַץ (H5422) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew verb natats describes tearing down, demolishing, shattering, or dismantling structures and objects. Torah texts command the removal of Canaanite altars, Judges narrates Gideon tearing down Baal's altar, Jeremiah's commission includes tearing down alongside building and planting, and the fall of Jerusalem includes enemy armies breaking its walls.
The BSB source-word alignment has 42 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include and tear down (4), tear down (3), and tore it down (2), broke down (2), He tore down (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 34:13. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Kings (8), Judges (8), Jeremiah (7), 2 Chronicles (6).
The Hebrew verb natats describes tearing down, demolishing, shattering, or dismantling structures and objects. Torah texts command the removal of Canaanite altars, Judges narrates Gideon tearing down Baal's altar, Jeremiah's commission includes tearing down alongside building and planting, and the fall of Jerusalem includes enemy armies breaking its walls. Leviticus can require a persistently affected house to be dismantled, while Job uses the verb for the felt destruction of his life and hope.
The word names decisive removal, but it does not make every destructive act righteous. Gideon's altar episode belongs to a narrated divine commission and cannot justify private attacks on another community's property. The demolition of Jerusalem is a catastrophe, not a model for ministry. Job's lament must be heard as testimony from suffering rather than corrected with easy explanations.
Responsible teaching asks who tears down what, under what authority, for what stated purpose, and whether the same passage also speaks of rebuilding, protection, grief, or accountability.
Natats denotes forceful dismantling or demolition of an altar, building, wall, city, defensive structure, or figurative life. Object, agent, authority, and narrative evaluation distinguish commanded cultic removal, sanitation, military devastation, prophetic judgment, lament, and future rebuilding.
It must be torn down with its stones, its timbers, and all its plaster, and taken outside the city to an unclean place.
A persistently affected house is dismantled and its materials are carried outside the city.
When the men of the city got up in the morning, there was Baal’s altar torn down, with the Asherah pole cut down beside it and the second bull offered up on the newly built altar.
The townsmen discover Baal's altar torn down after Gideon carries out the nighttime command.
He also pulled down the tower of Penuel and killed the men of the city.
Gideon pulls down Penuel's tower and kills men of the city after his victory.
See, I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and plant.”
Jeremiah's prophetic appointment includes uprooting and tearing down as well as building and planting.
And the whole army of the Chaldeans under the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem.
The Chaldean army breaks down Jerusalem's walls during the city's conquest and exile.
He tears me down on every side until I am gone; He uproots my hope like a tree.
Job says he is torn down on every side and his hope uprooted like a tree.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Destruction through violent dismantling; primarily of structures, walls, or fortifications being systematically torn down
Destruction through violent dismantling; primarily of structures, walls, or fortifications being systematically torn down
to tear down BDB: pull down Usage: beat down, break down (out), cast down, destroy, overthrow, pull down, throw down.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 42 lexical occurrence verses.
נָתַץ is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Natats does not offer a single moral verdict on demolition. Leviticus 14 places dismantling a house at the end of a defined inspection process, with priestly assessment and removal of affected material. It is not a license for untrained people to diagnose buildings, illness, or spiritual contamination. Judges 6 narrates Gideon removing Baal's altar under a particular command, yet Judges 8 uses the same verb when his victory turns toward retaliatory violence at Penuel.
The lexical repetition helps readers resist treating every action by a chosen leader as automatically exemplary. Jeremiah 1 joins tearing down with building and planting, so prophetic judgment is not reducible to destructive rhetoric. Second Kings 25 records Babylon's demolition of Jerusalem's walls as part of national catastrophe and exile. The text preserves loss that survivors must endure; it does not invite admiration of siege warfare.
Job 19 brings the verb into personal lament as Job describes his hope uprooted. Friends who hurry to defend a theory can deepen such suffering. Faithful application removes genuine hazards through lawful and qualified processes, rejects private violence, tells the truth about destructive power, listens to lament, and keeps restoration visible without pretending every loss can be quickly rebuilt.
Jer.1.10
Natats transliterates Hebrew נָתַץ. The verb commonly takes a constructed object such as an altar, wall, house, tower, or city; figurative usage can make a sufferer the object, while verbal stem and context identify the acting agent and degree of destruction.
The New Testament speaks of demolished arguments, a destroyed temple raised again, and communities built in Christ through different Greek expressions. Those connections may illuminate removal and rebuilding, but they do not transfer Israel's altar commands into authority for present property destruction.