I will make. This prophecy, therefore, was delivered before the destruction of Samaria in the fourth year of Hezekiah. As an heap of the field; or, into a heap of the field, like a heap of stones gathered off a cultivated field (comp.
Isaiah 5:2.) Septuagint, ἰσὀπωροφυλάκιον ἀγροῦ, "the hut of a fruit watcher." As plantings of a vineyard; into the plantings, etc.; i.e. into mere terraces for vines. Such shall be the utter ruin of the city, that on its site vines shall be planted.
The prophet here uses a description of complete destruction which is a regular formula in Assyrian inscriptions, where we read of cities being made into "a rubbish heap and a field." The expression occurs, e.
g; in a monument of Tiglath-Pileser. I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley. Samaria stood on a hilly platform (1 Kings 16:24), with a sheer descent on every side, and when it was overthrown its stones were hurled into the valley surrounding it, as may be seen to this day.
"When we looked down," says Tristram, "at the gaunt columns rising out of the little terraced fields, and the vines clambering up the sides of the hill once covered by the palaces of proud Samaria, who could help recalling the prophecy of Micah?
Not more literally have the denunciations on Tyre or on Babylon been accomplished. What though Sebaste rose, under Herod, to a pitch of greater splendour than even old Samaria, the effort was in vain, and the curse has been fully accomplished.
In the whole range of prophetic history, I know of no fulfilment more startling to the eyewitness in its accuracy than this." Will discover; will lay bare (Psalms 137:7; Ezekiel 13:14).