SALT IN THE EARTH
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matt. 5:14-16
Salt – small white tangy-tasting crystals used in food preparation and consisting largely of sodium chloride. Chemical compound – sodium chloride (NaCl); a vital constituent of the human body. Salt is used to enhance the flavor of foods and to preserve foods. It typically enters the diet from processed foods, or from adding salt to food during preparation, cooking, and at the table. Salt contains no calories, proteins, or carbohydrates, although unrefined salt does contain traces of other minerals.
Salt is necessary to human life. The sodium and chloride of salt, along with potassium, are electrolytes, which help the kidneys regulate the body’s fluid levels and the balance of acids and bases.
Nutritionists recommend about 3 to 8 grams of salt a day in an adult diet. The typical human being, however, consumes 10 to 20 grams of salt a day. In recent years, medical researchers have linked the excessive consumption of sodium (which makes up approximately 40 percent of salt) to hypertension (high blood pressure) in humans. Hypertension can lead to death through heart and kidney diseases and stroke. The sources of salt are seawater, mineral deposits etc.
Salt was procured by the Jews from the Dead Sea, wither from the immense hill or ridge of pure rock salt at its southwest extremity, or from that deposited on the shore by the natural evaporation. The Arabs obtain it in large cakes, two or three inches thick, and sell it in considerable quantities throughout Syria. It well-known preservative qualities, and its importance as a seasoning for food, (Job 6:6), are implied in most of the passages where it is mentioned in Scripture: as in the miraculous healing of a fountain, 2Ki 2:21; in the sprinkling of salt over the sacrifices consumed on God’s altar, Le 2:13; Eze 43:24; Mr 9:49; and its use in the sacred incense, Ex 30:35. So also good men are “the salt of the earth,” Mt 5:13; and grace, or true wisdom, is the salt of language, Mr 9:50; Col 4:6. See also Eze 16:4. To sow a land with salt – signifies its utter barrenness and desolation; a condition often illustrated in the Bible by allusions to the region of Sodom and Gomorrah, with its soil impregnated with salt, or covered with acrid and slimy pools, |De 29.33; Job 39.9; Eze 47.11; Zep 2.9|.
Salt is also the symbol of perpetuity and incorruption. Thus they said of a covenant, “It is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord,” Nu 18:19; 2Ch 13:5. It is also the symbol of hospitality; and of the fidelity due from servants, friends, guests, and officers, to those who maintain them or who receive them at their tables. The governors of the provinces beyond the Euphrates, writing to the king Artaxerxes, tell him, “Because we have maintenance from the king’s palace,” Ezr 4:14. To eat salt with one is to partake of his hospitality, to derive subsistence from him; and hence he who did so was bound to look after his host’s interests (Ezra 4:14, “We have maintenance from the king’s palace;” “We are salted with the salt of the palace;” (“We eat the salt of the palace”). Not necessarily meaning that they had “maintenance from the palace,” as Authorized Version has it, but that they were bound by sacred obligations fidelity to the king. So in the present day, “to eat bread and salt together” is an expression for a league of mutual amity. It was probably with a view to keep this idea prominently before the minds of the Jews that the use of salt was enjoined on the Israelites in their offerings to God.
VALLEY OF SALT. This place is memorable for the victories of David, 2Sa 8:13; 1Ch 18:12; Ps 60:1-12, and of Amaziah, 2Ki 14:7, over the Edomites. There can be little doubt that the name designates the broad deep valley El-Ghor, prolonged some eight miles south of the Dead Sea to the chalky cliffs called Akrabbim. Like this entire region, it bears the marks of volcanic action, and has an air of extreme desolation. It is occasionally overflowed by the bitter waters of that sea, which rise to the height of fifteen feet. The driftwood on the margin of the valley, which indicates this rise of the water, is so impregnated with salt that it will not burn; and on the northwest side of the valley lies a mountain of salt. Parts of this plain are white with salt; others are swampy, or marked by sluggish streams or standing pools of brackish water. The southern part is covered in part with tamarisks and coarse shrubbery. Some travelers have found here quicksand pits in which camels and horses have been swallowed up and lost, Ge 14:10; Zep 2:9.
Salt was sometimes mixed with the fodder of cattle (Isa. 30:24). New-born children were rubbed with salt (Ezek. 16:4). Disciples are likened unto salt, with reference to its cleansing and preserving uses (Matt. 5:13). When Abimelech took the city of Shechem, he sowed the place with salt, that it might always remain a barren soil (Judg. 9:45). Sir Lyon Playfair argues, on scientific grounds, that under the generic name of “salt,” in certain passages, we are to understand petroleum or its residue asphalt. Thus in Gen. 19:26 he would read “pillar of asphalt;” and in Matt. 5:13, instead of “salt,” “petroleum,” which loses its essence by exposure, as salt does not, and becomes asphalt, with which pavements were made.
Indispensable as salt is to us, it was even more so to the Hebrews, being to them not only an appetizing condiment in the food both of man and a valuable antidote to the effects of the heat of the climate on animal food.
They possessed an inexhaustible and ready supply of it on the southern shores of the Dead Sea. There is one mountain here called Jebel Usdum, seven miles long and several hundred feet high, which is composed almost entirely of salt. The Jews appear to have distinguished between rock-salt and that which was gained by evaporation as the Talmudists particularize one species (probably the latter) as the “salt of Sodom.” The salt-pits formed an important source of revenue to the rulers of the country, and Antiochus conferred a valuable boon on Jerusalem by presenting the city with 375 bushels of salt for the temple service. As one of the most essential articles of diet, salt symbolized hospitality; as an antiseptic, durability, fidelity and purity. Hence the expression “covenant of salt,”
“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Matt. 5:13
“Ye are the salt of the earth” Our Lord shows here what the preachers of the Gospel (Clergy and laity), and what all who profess to follow him, should be; the salt of the earth, to preserve the world from putrefaction and destruction. ( Le 2:13). The ministers of the word especially (unless they will be the most cowardly of all) must lead others both by word and deed to this greatest joy and happiness. Your doctrine must be very sound and good, for if it is not so, it will not be regarded and cast away as a thing unsavoury and vain. What will you have to salt with? And so are fools in the Latin tongue called “saltless”, as you would say, men that have no salt or savour and taste in them.
SALT was the opposite to leaven, for it preserved from putrefaction and corruption, and signified the purity and persevering fidelity that were necessary in the worship of God. Every thing was seasoned with it, to signify the purity and perfection that should be extended through every part of the Divine service, and through the hearts and lives of God’s worshippers. It was called the salt of the covenant of God, because as salt is incorruptible, so was the covenant made with Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and the patriarchs, relative to the redemption of the world by the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ.
Among the heathens salt was a common ingredient in all their sacrificial offerings; and as it was considered essential to the comfort and preservation of life, and an emblem of the most perfect corporeal and mental endowments, so it was supposed to be one of the most acceptable presents they could make unto their gods, from whose sacrifices it was never absent
Salt renders food pleasant and palatable, – to preserve it from corruption, to season its insipidity, to freshen and sweeten it and preserves it from putrefaction. So Christians, by their lives and instructions, are to keep the world from entire moral corruption. By bringing down, by their prayers, the blessing of God, and by their influence and example, Holy Doctrine, prayers, etc, they save the world from universal vice and crime. This is not for the apostles and ministers only; but for all who are God’s holy people – the salt of the earth and season to others. Mr 9:50; Lu 14:34.
There was not salt (Christians) enough in the antediluvian world to save it from the flood during the time of Noah, in Sodom and Gomorrah to save it from fire, nor in Canaan to preserve its people from destruction. What Christians are to be in themselves–seasoned with the gospel, with the salt of grace; thoughts and affections, words and actions, all seasoned with grace, Col 4:6. Have salt in yourselves; else you cannot diffuse it among others, Mr 9:50. What great blessings they are to the world. Mankind, lying in ignorance and wickedness, were a vast heap of unsavoury stuff, ready to putrefy; but Christ sent forth his disciples, by their lives and doctrines, to season it with knowledge and grace, and so to render it acceptable to God, to the angels, and to all that relish divine things.
“But if the salt have lost his savour” That this is possible in the land of Judea, we have proof from Mr. Maundrell, who, describing the Valley of Salt, speaks thus: “Along, on one side of the valley, toward Gibul, there is a small precipice about two men’s lengths, occasioned by the continual taking away of the salt; and, in this, you may see how the veins of it lie. I broke a piece of it, of which that part that was exposed to the rain, sun, and air, though it had the sparks and particles of salt, YET IT HAD PERFECTLY LOST ITS SAVOUR: the inner part, which was connected to the rock, retained its savour, as I found by proof.” A preacher, or private Christian, who has lost the life of Christ, and the witness of his Spirit, out of his soul, may be likened to this salt. He may have the sparks and glittering particles of true wisdom, but without its unction or comfort. Only that which is connected with the rock (Jesus Christ), the soul that is in union with Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit, can preserve its savour, and be instrumental of good to others.
The salt used in this country is a chemical compound–muriate of soda– and if the saltiness was lost, or it was to lose its savour, there would be nothing remaining. It is worthy of note that the salt of Palestine gathered from the marshes is not pure. Because of the foreign substances in it, it loses its savor and becomes insipid and useless, when exposed to the sun and air, or when permitted for any considerable time to come in contact with the ground; but pure salt does not lose its savor. It is common in Syria and Palestine to see salt scattered in piles on the ground because it has lost its flavor. The salt in these countries were mixed with earthy substances, which remained after it had lost its saltiness, and were thrown like gravel upon the walks, and trodden down. This kind of salt is common still in that country. It is found in the earth in veins or layers, and when exposed to the sun and rain, loses its saltiness entirely. Mr. Maundrell says,
“I broke a piece of it, of which that part that was exposed to the rain, sun, and air, though it had the sparks and particles of salt, yet it had perfectly lost its savour. The inner part, which was connected to the rock, retained its savour, as I found by proof.”
Of salt Unsavory” or “insipid” this is to lose its saline or salting property. The meaning is: If that Christianity on which the health of the world depends, does in any age, region, or individual, exist only in name, or if it contain not those saving elements for want of which the world languishes,
How shall the salting qualities be restored it? (Compare Mr 9:50). Whether salt ever does lose its saline property–about which there is a difference of opinion–is a question of no moment here. The point of the case lies in the supposition–that if it should lose it, the consequence would be as here described – good for nothing but to be trampled under foot by men. So it is with Christians. The question is not: Can, or do, the saints ever totally lose that grace which makes them a blessing to their fellow men? But, what is to be the issue of that Christianity which is found wanting in those elements which can alone stay the corruption and season the tastelessness of an all–pervading carnality? The restoration or non-restoration of grace, or true living Christianity, to those who have lost it, has, in our judgment, nothing at all to do here. The question is not, If a man lose his grace, how shall that grace be restored to him? But, since living Christianity is the only “salt of the earth,” if men lose that, what else can supply its place? What follows is the appalling answer to this question. “It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out–a figurative expression of indignant exclusion from the kingdom of God (compare Mt 8:12; 22:13; Joh 6:37; 9:34).
If they be not salty, they are as salt that has lost its savour. If you, who should season others, are yourselves unsavoury, void of spiritual life, relish, and vigour; if a Christian be so, especially if a minister be so, his condition is very sad; for He is irrecoverable – Wherewith shall it be salted? Salt is a remedy for unsavoury meat, but there is no remedy for unsavoury salt. Christianity will give a man a relish; but if a man can take up and continue the profession of it, and yet remain flat and foolish, and graceless and insipid, no other doctrine, no other means, can be applied, to make him savoury. If Christianity do not do it, nothing will.
“To be trodden underfoot” There was a species of salt in Judea, which was generated at the lake Asphaltites, and hence called bituminous salt, easily rendered vapid, and of no other use but to be spread in a part of the temple, to prevent slipping in wet weather. This is probably what our Lord alludes to in this place. The existence of such a salt, and its application to such a use… the most worthless thing imaginable
Such a Christian who has lost his saltiness is unprofitable: It is thenceforth good for nothing; what use can it be put to, in which it will not do more hurt than good? As a man without reason, so is a Christian without grace. A wicked man is the worst of creatures; a wicked Christian is the worst of men; and a wicked minister is the worst of Christians. He is doomed to ruin and rejection; He shall be cast out–expelled the church and the communion of the faithful, to which he is a blot and a burden; and he shall be trodden under foot of men. Let God be glorified in the shame and rejection of those by whom he has been reproached, and who have made themselves fit for nothing but to be trampled upon. (Rev. 3:16)
Mankind, lying in ignorance and wickedness, were as a vast heap, ready to putrefy; but Christ sent forth his disciples, by their lives and doctrines to season it with knowledge and grace. If they are not such as they should be, they are as salt that has lost its savour. If a man can take up the profession of Christ, and yet remain graceless, no other doctrine, no other means, can make him profitable. Our light must shine, by doing such good works as men may see. We must study to make suitable to our profession, and praiseworthy. We must aim at the glory of God.
PETER M. I. PETERS
