Salt
Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings. – Leviticus 2:13 NKJV.
In our church many of us are attempting to read through the Bible in 90 days by the end of the year. During one of the daily readings Leviticus 2:13 seemed to leap off the page and I knew that I needed to dig deeper into this verse.
Salt. Salt is necessary for life although we need a very small amount on a daily basis. We only need 500 mg a day which is only about a quarter of a teaspoon, and it is likely that we receive more than this in our modern diets.
Salt has been of value for centuries with the Roman soldier receiving his pay in “salt-money” from which the word “salary” originates. Salt has been used to express friendship and agreements with some agreements in past times being sealed by throwing salt over shoulders. Of course, you have to wonder whether a person is “worth their salt” or not.
So, we can see that the mention of Salt in the Bible is an important concept that shouldn’t be just passed over.
A “covenant of salt” in the Bible is used for an everlasting covenant. This phrase appears three times in the Bible in Numbers 18:19, 2 Chronicles 13:5 and in Leviticus 2:13.
King Abijah of Judah in 2 Chronicles 13:5 as he faces the armies of Israel led by King Jeroboam mentions the salt covenant: “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?”
Since the Levitical priests did not have land of their own, God promised to provide for them by the sacrifices of the people, and He called this promise of provision a “salt covenant.” Numbers 18:19 says this about that covenant: “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.”
Today, salt is easy to find in most countries, and we don’t necessarily need it as a preservative because of refrigeration. But to the people of Jesus’ time, salt was an important and precious thing. So, when Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 5:13 that they were “the salt of the earth,” He meant that believers have great value in this world and are to have a preserving influence.
We are to be the “salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13)” preserving and preventing the further deterioration of the societal fabric of this world. As Christians, Jesus calls upon us to be a preserving influence to hold the line against the rising tide of evil.
We know longer offer grain offerings with salt, but God still wants us to continue with the salt offerings. How is that possible? We are the salt of the earth, and we are told how to do that in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”