Salt

When I was in grades 6, 7, and 8, I mowed lawns and made real good money.  When I turned 17, a HS junior, my parents gave me a 7-year-old car with the stipulation that gas, tires, oil, licensing and insurance were all on me.  I could afford those expenses with no problem, but I also realized that money into the gas tank was money not in my pocket so I rejected the car.  I got a real good tennis racket instead – I still have that tennis racket.  My senior year I walked the mile to school – sometimes catching rides.  I graduated with a pretty fat bank account for a kid.  I had money because I did not spend money! 

Back to mowing – the first year doing so I had severe headaches as I would get very hot and sweat little.  The doctor prescribed salt.  So, the next years I carried one of those little lunchbox Morton salt shakers in my pocket and ate salt straight – quite a bit.  I came to sweat and to sweat profusely and from that time on I had few headaches when mowing.  Salt was critical to my “business” and early prosperity.  

Recently, I read through Ezekiel 40-48 and took note of these verses in 47:  There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes. It shall be that fishermen will stand by it from En Gedi to En Eglaim; they will be places for spreading their nets. Their fish will be of the same kinds as the fish of the Great Sea, exceedingly many.  But its swamps and marshes will not be healed; they will be given over to salt (9-11).

The northern end of the Dead Sea will be transformed into a place teeming with life while the south end will remain marshes for the purpose of salt extraction. 

So, what about Salt in the Scriptures?

Numbers 18:19, All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer to the Lord, I have given to you and your sons and daughters with you as an ordinance forever; it is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord with you and your descendants with you.

II Chronicles 13:5, Should you not know that the Lord God of Israel gave the dominion over Israel to David forever, to him and his sons, by a covenant of salt?

A covenant of Salt?  This is not clearly understood but as salt was often a means of exchange as it was valuable, salt might have served as a monetary component when a covenant was made. 

Leviticus 2:13, And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.

Salt with sacrifices!  Salt in sacrifices was prescribed and accepted by God.

Judges 9:45, And he demolished the city and sowed it with salt.

Salt was used to sterilize the ground.  Salted land could not produce a crop. 

Ezekiel 16:4, As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you; you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Salt was used for cleansing and tightening the skin of a newborn.

Matthew 5:13, You are the salt of the earth. 

May we be savory salt.

From Got Questions:  Mark 9:50 suggests that saltiness can be lost specifically through a lack of peace with one another; this follows from the command to “have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.” And in Luke 14:34-35, we find a reference to the metaphor of salt once again, this time in the context of obedient discipleship to Jesus Christ. The loss of saltiness occurs in the failure of the Christian to daily take up the cross and follow Christ wholeheartedly.

So salt is a very important commodity as made so and declared so by God.