Judg 9:1, 45-49, 1Ki 12:1 | TSK | STEP | Abimelech by conspiracy with the Shechemites, and murder of his brethren, is made king. Jotham by a parable rebukes them, and foretells their ruin. Gaal conspires with the Shechemites against him. Zebul reveals it. Abimelech overcomes them, and sows the city with salt. He burns the hold of the god Berith. At Thebez he is slain by a piece of a millstone. Jotham's curse if fulfilled. Abimelech. Shechem. communed.

sowed.Salt in small quantities renders land extremely fertile; but too much of it destroys vegetation. Every place, says Pliny, in which salt is found is barren, and produces nothing. Hence the sowing of a place with salt was a custom in different nations to express permanent desolation. Sigonius observes, that when Milan was taken, A.D. 1162, the walls were razed, and it was sown with salt. And Brantome informs us, that it was an ancient custom in France, to sow the house of a man with salt, who had been declared a traitor to his king. Charles IX., king of France, the most base and perfidious of human beings, caused the house of Admiral Coligni (whom he and the Duke of Guise caused to be murdered, with thousands more of Protestants, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, 1572,) to be sown with salt!

an hold.

4,27; 8:33; 1Ki 8:26; 2Ki 1:2-4; Ps 115:8; Isa 28:15-18; 37:38

Zalmon.

Ps 68:14

What ye.

7:17,18; Pr 1:11,12

me do. Heb. I have done.

put them.

15,20; Ga 5:15; Jas 3:16