SALT OF THE EARTH - WORLD

Matthew 5:13:You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has become unsalty, how can it be made salty again? It is not useful for anything any more except to be thrown out into the street and trampled under people’s feet.

Mark 9:49-50: For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has become unsalty, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” 

Luke 14:34-35: Now salt is good, but if the salt has become unsalty, how can you make it salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown out into the street. Anyone who has ears to hear had better listen!”

We have this statement in Matthew 5:13: “You are the salt of the earth”, and the Hebrew it's, “You are salt in the world”. And it really begs the question: what is the significance of salt?

Let's read the above verses:

Mark 9:49-50, this is the NRSV: “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”

And Luke 14:34-35: “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. They throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

Now, there are two ways to approach Matthew 5:13. One is, we can say that Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:49-50, and Luke 14:34-35 all happened at one single event in which Jesus spoke something about salt, and we have to understand all three of those as three different witnesses to the same - I'll use the analogy - to the same car crash in which all the witnesses will see something different.

Another possibility is Jesus said different things at different times, and they were recorded differently because they were different. And each one has to be understood by itself unto itself.

At the very least, my approach is, whether these are three witnesses to the same event; in this particular saying, I'm talking about; or is it that these were three different events, or two events?

First, my approach is you need to understand Matthew by itself, Mark by himself, Luke by himself. Then you can take them synoptically and say, "Okay, what if they are the same event, how do we understand them?”

So my approach here is to take first Matthew 5:13 and understand it in and of itself as its own saying as part of the Sermon on the Mount, and say, "Okay, what does he mean? What did it say?”

So, the question is here, what does it mean when he says they are salt? Obviously, they're not literally salt.

So “literally” is used today to mean “metaphorically”. So metaphorically, or literally, what did he mean by salt? And salt can mean lots of different things. What is interesting here is in the Hebrew it has “melakh atem ba'olam” – “you are salt in the world”. In the Greek it's “you are salt of the earth”.

Now the Word Biblical Commentary states: “With the tone of the sermon now set by means of the Beatitude and their proclamation of the blessedness of the kingdom, the Evangelist next presents two comprehensive statements about the necessity of living in a way that reflects the good news of the kingdom.

Now, following the introductory Beatitudes is a statement concerning the ethical demand of the kingdom, the very essence of discipleship.

These are, in short, kingdom ethics, instructions for those who are recipients of the kingdom, or for how those who are recipient to the kingdom are to live. The salt metaphor, however, is also found etc.” Luke agrees with Matthew against Mark, right? So he's saying, "If you look at Luke, Matthew and Mark, they don't use salt in the same way. Luke is agreeing with Matthew and it's different than Mark. Luke's second verse is not found in Mark,” etc., okay. And he goes on, "It is difficult to know with which specific natural quality of salt, if any, Jesus intends.”

So here you have these scholars, who I believe are... or at least, this Word Biblical Commentary was originally out of Waco, Texas, and then for some reason, they changed it to Dallas, which the older folks will understand why. He's saying, "We don't necessarily know why it's salt.” He's raising a really good problem, right? What is the significance of salt in the 21st century? We're trying to figure out something from the 1st century.

He goes on, "It may be best simply to take the metaphor broadly and inclusively as meaning something that is vitally important to the world in a religious sense, as salt was vitally necessary for everyday life.” And then he quotes a passage from Ben Sira. Ben Sira is a Jewish book written around 200 BC, and then translated by the author's grandson around the year 175. And in Ben Sira 39:26-27 it says, "The basic necessities of human life...” And why is this important? Jesus knew this book; His audience knew this book. This also reflects the mentality that existed in Second Temple times, right?

You have a Jew from 200 BC who's telling us the basic necessities of human life are: “Water and fire and iron and salt, and wheat, flour and milk and honey, the blood of the grape; meaning wine and oil and clothing. All these are good for the godly, but for sinners they turn into evils.”

Okay, so it's possible that when he says, "you are salt of the earth", he means “you're necessary for the world”. And in that case, he could have said, “you are the wheat of the earth”, “you are the honey of the earth”. He could have said that, according to the way Word Biblical Commentary is interpreting it based on Ben Sira and some other passages. He quotes Pliny, who's a Roman historian.

Jewish Annotated New Testament has a completely different interpretation. “Salt, following ancient Mesopotamia notions symbolizing purity and wisdom.” And then he quotes Exodus 30:35, which says nothing of the sort. He quotes 2 Kings 2:19-22, which I looked up, it says nothing of the sort. He quotes Mishnah Sotah 9:15, which says nothing of the sort. And then he finally quotes Ezekiel 16:4.

So let's look at Ezekiel 16:4. In other words, the Jewish Annotated New Testament is saying salt means purity and wisdom. Let’s see what’s in Ezekiel 16:4. We have the statement… I’m going to read it in one of the translations, because it’s a bit complicated to translate. Ezekiel 16:4: “As for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in cloth.” So what does it mean to be rubbed with salt?

According to the Jewish Annotated New Testament, it means to be made pure. And hence, when Jesus says, "You are salt of the earth,” you're this mechanism that purifies things.

However, I looked into Ezekiel 16:4, because why would they salt people? So it turns out this is something that's still done today in some Middle Eastern countries, where they take babies and they rub them with salt. And it is believed that it hardens their skin and makes them tougher.

Now, in reality, what we know today in the 21st century, is that salt has an antibacterial effect, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of evidence that anybody in the ancient world... because they didn't know about bacteria. All they knew is if they rub babies with salt, it somehow helped. And the theory was it made their skin tougher, somehow that made them stronger. They didn't get sick, but it made the skin tougher, they thought. Because when you salt beef with salt, it gets tougher. Anybody who's ever eaten kosher beef knows that; it's been salted, usually.

So I think it's a bit of an anachronism, but it's based on Ezekiel 16:4. So we have salt meaning it's a basic necessity of human life, and salt as a form of purification, I think, based on a misunderstanding of Ezekiel 16:4, but it's possible. The next one we have is Daniel 3:8.

Daniel 3:8 talks about the nations, specifically the Chaldeans, who are this group of magicians who are accusing the Jews, and it says, “Ve’akhalu kartzehon di yehudaya.” Let’s see how that’s translated. Daniel 3:8 in the standard translations. NRSV: “Accordingly, at this time, certain Chaldeans came forward and denounced the Jews.” Well, that has nothing to do with salt. Okay, that's NRSV.

Let's see if there's another translation that helps us out. JPS: “Seizing the occasion, certain Chaldeans came forward to slander the Jews.”

Still nothing to do with salt. “Wherefore at that time, certain Chaldeans came near and accused the Jews.” Nothing to do with salt, in the King James.

The Hebrew says, "And they ate their pinch, that of the Jews,” meaning the pinch of salt. So somehow eating somebody's salt means to accuse them. Now, I don't know exactly why or how. It's an idiom that comes, apparently, from Akkadian, from another language. But to eat someone salt means to accuse them. So maybe "salt of the earth" means, "You are the ones who are going to accuse the world. I don't know. Or you're the deeds of the world that will be accused... I don't know exactly, but these are different possibilities we're exploring. Now, let's get the salt covenant.

It's amazing. I want you to look at two different translations of Ezra 4:14. Pick your English translation that you like other than the JPS, and then the JPS is going to be the second one.

NRSV. “Now, because we share the salt of the palace, and is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor, terefore, we send and inform the king.”

What does the NIV say?

The NIV says, “Now, since we are under obligation to the palace, and it is not proper for us to see the king dishonored, we are sending this message to inform the king.”

What does that mean for you if you read that? What does it mean in the NIV, if you hear that?

We have some commitment to the palace, to the king, to the emperor.

Now see what the NJPS says:

NJPS, New Jewish Publication Society from 1985. “Now, since we eat the salt of the palace, it is not right...”

What does that mean?

Not sure it's written in Aramaic. So it's [Aramaic 14:13], “And now, because we have,” literally, “the salt of the sanctuary, or of the royal palace, we have salted,” is literally what it says. So we've salted the salt of the palace, meaning of the Emperor. What does that mean? We've partaken of the salt; we've somehow entered into some kind of situation with the salt.

And to understand it, we have to understand that in the ancient world, and especially in the biblical world… but these aren't Israelites who are speaking; these are the enemies of Israel, but it's part of a broader thing in the ancient world, that you would involve salt with a covenant. And with that, we’ve got to go to Leviticus 2:13.

Leviticus 2:13: “Every grain offering of yours more ever you shall season with salt so that the salt of the covenant of your God will not be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.”

Notice; Numbers 18:19: “All the offerings of the holy gifts which the sons of Israel offered to Yehovah I have given to you and your sons and your daughters with you as a permanent allotment. It is a permanent covenant of salt before Yehovah to you and your descendants with you.”

Notice: Second Chronicles 13:5: “Do you not know that Yehovah, God of Israel, gave the rule over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt.”

So now we have this idea of the covenant of salt, and that's interesting in and of itself, but in the Torah we have this idea of a covenant of salt, that you literally bring physical salt when you offer certain types of sacrifices. You bring that salt, and that salt represents the covenant.

And then here in 2 Chronicles 13:5, the covenant of salt is the covenant that God has with the kingdom of David and the descendants of David. You could even say there's some messianic significance of the covenant of salt. So when he says “you are salt of the earth”, he could mean, “you are the ones who represent the covenant of salt of the Messiah”.

“The covenant of salt of the sacrifice.” There could be a connotation there, that “you are salt of the earth, anybody who's following what I'm teaching is that salt that represents the salt of the Covenant.” That's a possibility. Is that what Jesus meant?

We have to leave it up people to decide, right?

As the World Bible Commentary had said, it's hard to decide which meaning of salt he intends, if any. What characteristic of salt he's referring to, based on this information.

Notice: Psalm 107:34 is an example of salt in a different sense than what we've seen up until now. And it's the sense of salt as destruction, that when you put salt in the earth, in the soil, it actually makes it difficult to grow crops. And so, Psalm 107:33: “He turns the river into a wilderness, springs of water into thirsty land, fruitful land into a place of salt - melekha, a salt area. “...because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.”

So God turning something into salt means He's turning it into something unproductive, right? Because it's hard to grow crops when there’s salt. Jeremiah 17:6 has a very similar phrase.

Judges 9:45: “He should be like a bush in the desert which does not sense the coming of good. It is set in the scorched places of the wilderness. It is a place of salt without inheritance.” It doesn't say in the Hebrew "barren land", that's JPS. The Hebrew said, “It is a place of salt without inheritance.”

“In an uninhabited salt land,” the NRSV has, which is a more accurate translation. “And it’s salt land when no one lives,” the NIV has. So it's literally eretz melekha – “land of salt”, in which velo teshev, “which is not inhabited”. So land of salt means a land which is uninhabited.

Now let’s explain what all that means with Judges 9:45: “And he captured the city and killed the people who were in it. Then he tore down the city and sowed it with salt.” When Abimelech defeated Shkhem, and he sowed salt in the earth. He did that so nothing would grow there. Now, does he have enough salt to really destroy

Alright, back to what Yeshua taught now. So when he said, "You are salt of the earth,” maybe he means, "You're the destruction of the earth.” And he could have meant that even without Carthage. He could have meant that simply based on Judges.

And not only Judges, as I looked this up, I found out that salting the earth was a common practice in the ancient world. There's a document that was uncovered by archaeologists, it's called the Treaty of King Bar Gaya of Katak with Matiel, son of Atersamak, king of Arpad. It's from an ancient Mesopotamian document, and there he is calling upon Hadad, who is their god. Hadad is actually the true name of Ba'al. Hadad's name was considered ineffable, unpronounceable by the Canaanites, and so, the Canaanites called them Ba'al, but the other ancient people call him Hadad, which was his name. Ba'al just means "lord". “May Hadad sow it with salt and cress.” Cress is this weed. So they had this practice - and they're calling upon Hadad to go do this for them - to walk around behind the plow and cast salt and also the seeds of a weed. Why a weed? So it’ll be hard for crops to grow there, and what will grow there will be weeds. So now try to grow wheat there. It will be really hard, because you’ve got salt and weeds.

And there are other documents that describe this. That they would cast cress, this weed, and salt, as a way of destroying the land. So maybe what Jesus meant when he said "you are salt of the earth"... specifically in the Greek it fits a lot better than the Hebrew, right? I'm casting you out like the salt of the earth to destroy that Earth. And then, if the salt loses its salt, well, it's just good for to be trampled down. Okay, that part doesn't fit so well. We don't know what it means, right? The Word Biblical Commentary said, "Who knows what he meant?” And they're right.

Now, we're not going to read it, but I want to refer people to Rabbi Soloveichik, who wrote the first known Jewish commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. And in the commentary [The Bible, the Talmud and the New Testament]  He brings this parallel to explain the passage on salt. He brings a passage in the Babylonian Talmud, and it's specifically Baba Kama 50 A. And I looked at Baba Kama 50 A and thought, "Well, that has nothing to do with it, so why did he bring that?” And I don't know why he brought it, but I think it was very deliberate, because there's another passage of the Talmud which not only fits perfectly with what Jesus is saying but explains very well what Jesus is saying.

‘When salt is spoiling,’” or it could mean, when salt becomes weak.

In the Talmud there's a dialogue with the sages of Athens, whoever these guys are, and they talk about when salt loses its flavor. “When salt becomes weaker, spoiling, with what does one salt it to preserve it? Rabbi Yehoshua said to them, ‘With the placenta of a mule.' They said to him, ‘But is there a placenta of a mule?’ Rabbi Yehoshua said to them, ‘And does salt spoil?’”

So we have here definitive proof that the statement “salt losing its flavor” is considered a statement that is nonsensical.

It reminds me a lot of Amos 3:3, which people mistranslate, "Can two walk together, lest they be agreed?” But in the context, that’s not what it says. It says, "Can two walk together without having met one another?” Well, obviously they can’t. And then it says something to the effect of, "Does a lion roar and people don’t get scared?” Well, of course they get scared if a lion roars. “And does Yehovah speak, and the people aren’t stirred?” So it’s a series of statements that are obvious statements. There’s nothing clever about it; quite the contrary. If you don’t know what that means, you’ve got to stop and think. And it seems from this story that salt losing its flavor is a statement that people understood was inherently impossible. And that was the point of the statement, “can salt lose its flavor?”

Matthew 5:13:.. “Ba'et hahi amar Yeshua letalmidav,” “at that time Jesus said to his disciples,” “melakh atem ba'olam,” “you are salt in the world.” “Eem hamelakh yevatel ta'amo, bameh yimlakh?” “If the salt will lose its flavor, with what will it be salted?” “Ve'eino shaveh klum.” “It's not worth anything.” “Ela sheyushlakh bakhutz lihiyot mirmas raglayim.” “But only to be thrown outside and be trampled underfoot.”

Notice this exchange between Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Hananiah sometime around the year 100 AD, approximately, give or take, and these people in Athens, “When salt becomes weak with what does one salt it to preserve it?” We said salt could mean destruction, salt can mean all these different things, it can mean purification. But no, what salt means is preservation. When salt becomes weak, when it's spoiling, with what does one salt it to preserve it? With the placenta of a mule. But does a mule have a placenta? No, it doesn't give birth; it can't have a placenta.\

Rabbi Yehoshua said to them, “And does salt spoil, or does it become weak?” No. Salt has an inherent characteristic, which is that it preserves things.

So salt doesn't mean destruction, it doesn't mean purification. It means preservation.

The earliest Christian to write a commentary on Matthew that survived in any form, is Origen. Origen lived in the 2nd century, but his commentary was lost on Matthew chapter 5.

However, it's quoted, and we have citations where people are quoting it, later church fathers. And here's how he interprets it. “The disciples of the Messiah preserved this whole earthly region.” Meaning, what's the meaning of salt? Preservation. “And by placing themselves in the stench that comes from the sins of idolatry and sexual immorality, constrain them.” Meaning you put salt into this festering wound... what do you do, you put salt on meat and the meat stops stinking, it stops rotting. Today we could say because it kills the bacteria. They didn't know that; they didn't care. They just knew it worked.

What Origen is saying is you put salt on the stench of the world with idolatry and sexual immorality, and it holds back this idolatry and sexual immorality. He says, "I think this is the reason Matthew has described Jesus's disciples as salt,” meaning preservation.

There is this passage in the Talmud. It is in the Tractate of Ketubot 66 B, in the Babylonian Talmud, and it is a story that I think definitively proves what Jesus meant by salt.

We saw this story with the disciple, or Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Hananiah and the wise men of Athens, these philosophers of Athens, they understand salt as preservation, and they understand that salt by its nature can't lose its flavor.

So here is a story about a woman named Miriam. She's the daughter of a man named Nakdimon Ben Gurion. He is actually one of the few Jews of the first centuries mentioned in the New Testament. He is the Nicodemus of the New Testament. Of John 3:1-21, John 7:50-51 and 19:39-42. The story takes place with his daughter, when she has become impoverished, and it says as follows. She has this encounter with the rabbi, and she said to him, "My teacher, sustain me.” She's out there, begging for money. “He did not recognize her, so he said to her, ‘My daughter, who are you?’ She said to him, ‘I am the daughter of Nakdimon Ben Gurion, I'm Nicodemus' daughter.’ He said to her, ‘My daughter, the money of your father's household, where did it go?’” You're the daughter of the richest man in Jerusalem! What? You're sitting there begging for alms? “‘How did you become so poor?’ She said to him, ‘My teacher, is it not that they say such a proverb in Jerusalem?’” So she responds with a well-known proverb in Jerusalem from the 1st century.

This is incredible! We have a well-known proverb being recited as her answer to the rabbi as to why she's so poor, and it has two versions. The first version is, “melakh mamon khaser”, “the salt of money is lacking”. And what that means is, there is nothing that can preserve money. So what is melakh in this 1st century Jewish proverb known from Jerusalem? Melakh, salt, equals preservation. Why does it equal preservation? Because you put salt on meat, and it preserves the meat. They understood that. And she said, “But some say,” meaning, there's another version of the proverb, which is “melakh mamon khesed,” which means “kindness is salt for money”. In other words, using money for acts of kindness preserves it. So she's trying to explain why she has no money, what happened to all of her father's money. “Just because my father was rich doesn't mean I'm going to be rich, because there's no way to preserve money.” If money is lost, it's gone, and there's no salt that can preserve money. Or righteousness can be a salt for money, but not here on earth. That's up in heaven. So what this means is in the 1st century in Jerusalem we can definitively say salt, as a metaphor, meant preservation.

When the rabbis having this encounter with the sages of Athens, they're reflecting the same idea that when he says, "You are salt of the earth,” you preserve the Earth.

Note: In my experience we have far exceeded the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. We've left them in the dust, and I do believe that the reason that God doesn't destroy the world... and He promised not to destroy it with water; He didn't say anything about fire. I think the reason that He hasn't destroyed the world is there are righteous people out there, and He's preserving the world for those righteous people. This is an ancient Jewish idea. I don't know why they chose this number, but they chose the number 36. They said there always need to be at least 36 righteous people in the world, or God will wipe the world away and destroy it.

And when Yeshua said, "You are salt in the world,” I think based on this evidence what he meant is... and what comes after is so important, right? We'll get to Matthew 5:17, he explains how to do this. By your righteous living you keep the world from being destroyed. You are salt preserving the earth, and it's inherent in your nature to do that, to preserve the world as salt.

Salt can't lose its flavor, we all know that; it's a nonsensical statement, so do what you were made to do, do what you were sent into the world to do, preserve the world. Not for your own sake, not for some reward in the world to come. That may come, God will do what He does, but for the sake of the world today, to live in accordance with the word of God sending forth the message of the gospel until the end of the age to preserve the world from destruction.

You are salt, it's in your spiritual DNA. We are the ones that are going to preserve, can it also be that the words of Jesus, “you are salt in the world”, is how we live. May that be the application, that we live in a way... and the next verse, and the next verse, and the next verse, it gets better and better and better. This is what you are. Be all you can be as new creations in the Lord Messiah Jesus. This is who we are. What an awesome responsibility.

Notice: Luke 21:24: And they will fall by the mouth of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

So the world is preserved from the wrath of Yehovah by the disciples of the Lord Messiah Jesus who are the salt of the world, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled at the end of this age.

Written by Nehemia Gordon and edited and added to by Bruce Lyon