John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: June 26

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John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: June 26


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Samaria and Zion

Mic_1:6; Mic_3:12

The prophet Micah has a remarkable prophecy respecting each of the two capitals of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which have both been accomplished in their time. It will be remembered that both Samaria and Jerusalem were flourishing capitals at the time of the prophecy; and nothing could in human calculation have seemed less likely than that they should be brought into the condition the prophet intimates. Foreign conquest was indeed possible, and had already been foretold of both kingdoms by different prophets. But it by no means followed that these cities should suffer to the extent foreshown; for it was not the usual policy of conquerors to destroy the cities they reduced, but rather to preserve them as monuments of their own glory.

But Micah prophesies of Samaria, that the Lord would “make Samaria as a heap of a field, and as plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.” This prediction is not of that class, the terms of which may be applicable to many different cities in given localities, and which, as we lately said, have been too much pressed in the specific application of details; but it has, obviously, as in the case of Tyre, though not altogether in the same degree, a definite reference to circumstances, especially appropriate to a town situated as Samaria was. In the Narrative of Messrs. Bonhar and M‘Cheyne, they relate that “We read over the prophecy of Micah, regarding Samaria as we drew near to it, and conversed together as to its full meaning. We asked Dr. Keith what he understood by the expression, ‘I will make Samaria as a heap of the field.’ He said, he supposed the ancient stones of Samaria would be found, not in the form of ruins, but gathered into heaps in the same manner as in cleaning a vineyard, or as our farmers at home clean their fields, by gathering the stones together.” Presently this conjecture was found to be completely verified; but how, they do not tell so clearly as Dr. Keith himself, in the last edition (1848) of his Evidence of Prophecy. “It is even reduced to be as a heap of the field. The stones which yet lie on its surface, bereft of the glory that might seem to hover round a ruin, however defaced, have been gathered singly, and cast into heaps, as it were, the heaps of a field, and not the remains of a capital. The ground has been cleared of them, to form the gardens or patches of cultivated ground possessed by the inhabitants of the wretched village which stands at the extremity of the site of the ancient city. The stones, as if in a field or vineyard, have been manifestly gathered into heaps to prepare the ground for being sown or planted. These stones evidently belonged to the buildings of the city.”

But only a small portion of its remains exist in this shape upon the top of the hill, “the crown of pride,” whereon the city stood; for, in conformity with the remainder of the prediction, the stones have been largely “poured down into the valley.” Ascending the side of the hill to its summit, Bonar and M‘Cheyne observed that the whole of the face of the hill on that side suggests the idea, that the buildings of the ancient city had been thrown down from the top of the hill. Reaching the trop, and going round the whole summit, they found marks of the same process everywhere. The people of the locality, in order to make room for their fields and gardens, had poured down the remains of the old buildings into the valley. Masses of stone, and in one place two broken columns are seen, as it were on their way to the bottom of the hill, where they remain either partially strewn over the ground, or gathered into heaps among the trees.

In speaking of Jerusalem, the prophet says, especially of Mount Zion, then the stronghold, as well as the court end of the town, and as such covered with palaces and fortifications—that it should “be ploughed as a field.” The limitation of this to Mount Zion, shows that the prophet had in view the fact, that the site of the city would not, like many other cities that are the subject of prophecy, be wholly forsaken; but although for a time it should lie in “heaps,” as after the destructions by the Chaldeans and the Romans, yet that it should eventually remain an inhabited site, but so greatly reduced in extent and importance, that the parts then enclosed within its walls should become suburban fields and gardens. This view, which we submit as the right one, is confirmed by the fact, that such a site as that of Mount Zion would never be cultivated but by people still occupying some part of the site of old Jerusalem. The fact that Zion is at this day plowed as a field is undoubted. This was shown long ago by Dr. Richardson, who says that, at the time he was there, one part of it supported a crop of barley; another was undergoing the labor of the plow; and he observed that the soil turned up, consisted of stone and lime mixed with earth, such as is usually met with in the foundations of ruined cities. Dr. Keith says, that, on his first visit to Zion, he and his friends gathered some ears of barley from a field that had been plowed and reaped; and that on his last visit he saw the plow as in any other field, actually cleaving the soil of Zion.

The prophecy may also have contemplated another fulfillment. It was a custom of ancient conquerors to draw a plow over a conquered and ruined city, designing to express by this act that the site should be built upon no more, but should be given to agriculture. Now it is well known that, after the destruction of the city and temple by the Romans, Turnus Rufus, the general left on the spot, passed the plow over the site, in conformity with orders received from the emperor; in consequence of which, the site remained for many years utterly desolate.