The men of Shechem set liers-in-wait for him on the tops of the mountains, and they robbed all who came along that way by them: and it was told Abimelech.
"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.] 