Micah 1:7

"And all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate; for the hire of a harlot hath she gathered them, and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return."

This verse pinpointed the great sin of Samaria. Like the old Canaanite pagans before them in their land, they had turned heart and soul unto the worship of their vile bull-gods, the baalim, reeking with its corruption and largely supported by its system of sacred prostitution. The Decalogue carried the injunction that Israel should "not make unto thee any graven image"; but, instead they had filled the land with them. Archer's summary of this is as follows:

"The Assyrian troops of Sargon would smash her idols and destroy the dedicated treasures and votive monuments (the harlot's hires from her false lovers, the heathen gods) in her temples. All the materialistic gains and advantages (such as the political alliance with Phoenicia engineered by Jezebel's marriage to Ahab) will be wiped out, or carried off as spoil by the enemy."[23]

"The accent is firmly on Yahweh as the prime mover behind history."[24]

In Micah 1:6, the prophet had declared that Samaria would become as "a heap in a field"; and oddly enough, in one of the monuments to the conquest of Samaria excavated at Nineveh, are descriptions of Israel's cities, of which the inscriptions read, "They were made into a rubbish-heap and a field."[25] Even today, Samaria "is heaps of stone, not only on the hill-summit but also in the fields below."[26]