Questions From Readers

● How were the words of Micah 1:6, 7 fulfilled upon Samaria?

Through his prophet Micah, Jehovah God declared: “I shall certainly make Samaria a heap of ruins . . . And her graven images will all be crushed to pieces, and all the gifts made to her as her hire will be burned in the fire; and all her idols I shall make a desolate waste. For from the things given as the hire of a prostitute she collected them, and to the thing given as the hire of a prostitute they will return.”​—Mic. 1:6, 7.

In fulfillment of that prophetic judgment, in 740 B.C.E. the Assyrians destroyed Samaria, which would have included her many images. These idols provided no protection for the unfaithful Israelites from the conquering armies.

But what of the gifts that idolatrous Israelites brought to the centers of false worship? These gifts could be termed the “hire of a prostitute.” Why so? Because they were presented for the support of false worship and constituted a violation of their covenant with Jehovah God, to whom they were bound as a wife is to her husband. According to the common practice of that time, precious items taken from the sanctuaries of conquered peoples were deposited in the temples of the victors. (Compare Ezra 1:7.) This signified that the gods of the conquerors had triumphed over the gods of the subjugated peoples. So the hire of Israel’s spiritual prostitution (the votive offerings of idolatrous worshipers) enhanced the false religion of the Assyrians. Thus the gifts brought by idolatrous Israelites to their gods ‘returned to the hire of a prostitute’ in becoming gifts to Assyrian gods.