Boyd’s Bible Dictionary:
(sea product). Abundant in Palestine. Used with food and sacrificial offerings (Job 6:6; Lev. 2:13; Num. 18:19; Mark 9:49). Monument of divine displeasure (Gen. 19:26); token of indissoluble alliance (Lev. 2:13; Num. 18:19; 2 Chron. 13:5); used to rub new-born children (Ezek. 16:4); type of maintenance (Ezra 4:14 marg.); emblem of sterility (Judg. 9:45; Jer. 17:6); a manure (Luke 14:35); emblem of holy life and conversation (Matt. 5:13; Mark 9:50; Col. 4:6).
Concise Bible Dictionary:
Salt from the Dead Sea
This well-known and valuable condiment is found in abundance near the Dead Sea. In scripture salt is used as symbolical of moral savor and thus of a preservative. Every oblation of the meat offering was to be seasoned with salt (Lev. 2:13). The heave offerings given to the priest are called “a covenant of salt” (Num. 18:19).
Salt by the Dead Sea
Christians are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost its savor, it is of no use whatever (Matt. 5:13; Mark 9:50; Luke 14:34-35). It is typical of freshness and savor in a Christian, his heart being maintained in the sense of grace, the loss of which nothing else can supply.
The Christian’s speech should be with grace, seasoned with salt (Col. 4:6), not characterized by asperity, nor lacking unction, and yet morally wholesome in its character. “Everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt” (Mark 9:49). God puts all to the proof, but with the saint it is the dross that is consumed. Every sacrifice being salted with salt refers to the preservation of that which is set apart for God from corruption and impurity.
To “eat the salt” of their masters, is used by the Persians and Hindoos to imply that they are fed by their employers. This idea is found in Ezra 4:14, where the opposers of the Jews say, “We eat the salt of the palace,” as the passage is more literally translated: see margin. With reference to an infant being “salted” (Ezek. 16:4), Galen records that this was done to render the skin tighter and firmer.
“150. Use of Salt” From Manners and Customs of the Bible:
Leviticus 2:13. Every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.
The reason for this law, according to Maimonides, was found in the fact that the heathen never offered salt in sacrifices. If this were the case in the time of Moses, their custom must have changed subsequently, since there is abundant evidence of this use of salt among heathen of a later day. Some suppose that they imitated in this the Jewish sacrifices.
The partaking of salt by different persons together is regarded among the Arabs as a pledge of friendship. It is equivalent to a most solemn covenant. Numerous instances are recorded by travelers illustrative of this. So deeply rooted is this sentiment, that intended robbery has been abandoned when the robber has accidentally eaten salt while getting his plunder. Travelers have sometimes secured their safety in the midst of wild Bedouin by using stratagem in getting the Arabs to eat salt with them. Macgregor tells how he thus outwitted a sheikh who had made him a prisoner, and whose disposition seemed to be unfriendly. “We had now eaten salt together, and in his own tent, and so he was bound by the strongest tie, and he knew it” (The Rob Roy on the Jordan, p. 260).
By thus using salt in their sacrifices the people were bound to Jehovah in most solemn covenant. Hence we read of the “covenant of salt” (Num. 18:19; 2 Chron. 13:5).
“637. Savorless Salt” From Manners and Customs of the Bible:
Matthew 5:13. If the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
See also Luke 14:34-35.
Salt produced by the evaporation of sea-water in hot countries is said sometimes to lose its saline properties. The same result is also sometimes seen in impure rock-salt that has long been exposed to the air. When such is the case there can nothing be done with it but to throw it out into the highway, where men and beasts trample it down. Dr. Thomson tells of some salt which was brought from the marshes of Cyprus by a merchant of Sidon, and stored in small houses with earthen floors. “The salt next the ground in a few years entirely spoiled. I saw large quantities of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of men and beasts. It was good for nothing” (The Land and the Book, vol. 2, p. 43).
Schöttgen supposes reference is here made to the bituminous salt from the Dead Sea, which, he says, was strewn over the sacrifices in the temple to neutralize the smell of the burning flesh, and when it became spoiled by exposure it was cast out upon the walks to prevent slipping in wet weather, and was thus literally “trodden under foot of men.”
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