Then said Zebul to him, Where is now your mouth, that you said, Who is Abimelech, that we should serve him? is not this the people that you have despised? go out now, I pray, and fight with them.
"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.] 