Abimelech got him up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the people who were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it up, and laid it on his shoulder: and he said to the people who were with him, What you have seen me do, make haste, and do as I have done.
"Strewing the ruined city with salt [Judges 9:45], which only occurs here, was a symbolical act, signifying that the city was to be turned for ever into a barren salt desert. Salt ground is barren desert (Job xxxix. 6, [Psalms] cvii. 34)." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, p. 370.] 