True or false: Salt is bad for you.

If you answered true, chances are you were not the only one. Chances are also good that you have difficulty understanding what Jesus means when he says, “You are the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13).

In the Gospel for Epiphany 5, which is this coming Sunday, Jesus tells believers that they are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Mt 5:13-16). Let’s look at the culture and context in which Jesus spoke these words and see if we can understand what he meant a little better.

Salt

If you answered above that salt is bad for you, perhaps stop and think for a moment just how much salt you take in and use on a daily basis. Look at the ingredients of everything you use. Don’t just look for the word salt; also look for the words sodium and saline. The problem isn’t that salt is bad for us; the problem is that we often have too much of it, precisely because many different companies (and not just food companies) know how useful it is.

Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) wrote about salt at length in his Natural History (Book 31, Chapters 39-45). Two quotes in his work stand out:

Therefore, by Hercules, a more humane life is unable to continue without salt, and so necessary is this element that it is applied even to uncommon pleasures of the mind. They are called “salts” (witticisms), and all the charm of life and the sum of its pleasantness and the repose from its labors do not fit another word better than this one. (Chapter 41)

Wherein should be applied with the greatest attention the saying that nothing is more useful for entire bodies than salt and the sun. (Chapter 45)

Joshua ben Sirach also stressed the importance of salt. In his book commonly called the Wisdom of Sirach, he wrote (39:26):

The basic necessities of human life are water and fire and iron and salt, wheat flour, milk and honey, the blood of the grape, oil and clothing.

Salt’s Usefulness

So what’s so great about salt? Among its uses Pliny mentions the following:

• Useful for the eyes; used in all sorts of eyes salves and plasters
• Imparts a gloss and smoothness to the skin
• Seasons meats and other foods
• Preserves meat
• Preserves corpses from corruption for ages
• Salty areas make for better pastureland for sheep, cattle, and draft animals (the cows give more milk; the cheese tastes better; etc.)
• No sacrifice was made without a salt-grain mixture
• Stimulates the appetite
• Alleviates snake-bites, scorpion stings, and hornet and wasp stings when mixed with other substances
• Applied with veal suet, it helps migraines, ulcers on the head, blisters, pimples, and incipient warts
• Used with an equal weight of myrrh and with honey, or with hyssop in warm waters, it helps eyes that are bloodshot from a blow, or that are bruised
• Helps cataracts when ground in a little stone mortar with milk
• Applied in a lint for running ulcers of the mouth
• Rubbed on swollen gums
• Broken and ground salt helps roughness of the tongue
• Popular wisdom held that teeth neither rotted nor decayed if a person daily, while fasting in the morning, kept a piece of salt under the tongue until it melted
• Cures leprous sores, boils, lichen, and psoriasis, when used with seedless raisins, beef suet, origanum, and leaven or bread
• Beneficial for diseased tonsils when mixed with honey
• Good for quinsy, especially when oil and vinegar are added, while at the same time salt and liquid pitch are applied externally to the throat
• Mixed with wine it softens the belly, and taken in wine it drives out harmlessly the various kinds of worms
• Relieves pains of the sinews, especially in the region of the shoulders and kidneys, when applied in bags kept hot by frequent dipping into boiling water
• Cures the gout when pounded with flour, honey, and oil
• Removes corns on the feet and chilblains (painful, itching swellings on the skin of the hands or feet caused by exposure to cold)
  
• Applied to sheep and oxen to remove itch-scab

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And the list goes on and on. The Bible itself mentions a few of the first-named uses above. Salt was added to all grain offerings (Lev 2:13). (Eventually it was added to all offerings. Josephus tells us that King Antiochus the Great, in order to replace the supply of salt in the temple as a favor to the Jews, had 375 medimni of salt, about 559 US bushels, delivered there.) It was used to season food (Job 6:6). Newborn babies were rubbed with salt (Eze 16:4). Salt was also used to “heal” a spring (2Ki 2:19-22).

The Talmud adds that salt was used to cure animal hides (Middoth 5:3); it was scattered on the altar’s ascent to keep the priests from slipping (‘Erubin 10:14); wedding crowns for bridegrooms were made from it (Sotah 49b); it was used for a temporary repair to the altar (Sukkah 48b); and a lump of it was placed in a lamp to make it burn more brightly (Shabbath 67b).

You may recall that even in Pat Frank’s more recent work of fiction, Alas, Babylon (1959), which attempts to depict life in the United States after nuclear destruction, salt is one of the most urgent necessities.

Salt was a vital commodity, not just white grains you shook on eggs. Dan used saline solutions for half a dozen purposes. The children used salt to brush their teeth. Without salt, the slaughter of the Henry pigs would have been a terrible waste. They planned to tan one hide to cut badly needed moccasins, and without salt this was impossible. As soon as they were out of salt it seemed that almost everything required salt, most of all the human body. (Chapter 12)

The importance of salt as a preservative cannot be underestimated. In the days before refrigerators, one of the only ways to preserve meat was with salt. The Jews also mixed some salt-sand in with their stored grain in order to preserve it (Shabbath 31a).

Where did they get salt?

The Talmud only explicitly mentions two sources for salt – the Dead Sea and a city named Ostrakine (os-tra-KEE-nay) on the Palestinian-Egyptian border. The former was called Sodomitic salt and was produced by the evaporating saltwater of the Dead Sea. It was especially sharp and therefore was primarily used for salting offerings (‘Erubin 17b). About the latter not much information is given, except that it too could be used for salting offerings (Menahoth 21a) and was possibly also occasionally used to construct partitions (Baba Bathra 20b).

The Talmud also mentions coarse salt, which perhaps came from salt mines (e.g. Hullin 113a).

Pliny names a host of sources for salt. There were lakes with salt in Phrygia, Cappadocia, and Cyprus. There were rivers in Bactria (modern day northern Afghanistan), which “bring down scrapings of salt from nearby mountains.” There were hot springs that carried salt, “such as those at Pagasae” in east central Greece. There were “mountains of natural salt” in India, and salt was mined in Cappadocia. In the provinces of Gaul and Germany people would pour saltwater on burning logs, resulting in a dark salt once the water evaporated. There were also various kinds of sea salt. It appears that salt from Tarentum in Italy was considered the finest for almost any purpose.

Considering the ease and abundance of trade during the Pax Romana, obtaining salt does not appear to have been all that difficult for the people of Jesus’ day.

So how are Christians “the salt of the earth”?

Jesus speaks these words during his Sermon on the Mount, in the middle of a section where he is talking about our witness to him in what we say and do. Since the statement “You are the salt of the earth” is a general one, I think we are able to make a variety of general applications:

1. As I was sharing some of the above with a friend, he commented, “Man alive, the preacher could spend the entire sermon just talking about how great salt is. Then, all he’d have to do is conclude by saying, ‘See, that’s how great Jesus thinks you are.’” That wouldn’t be a bad sermon. It is amazing that Jesus does not say, “You should be the salt of the earth.” He says, “You are.”
2. Related to #1, when we begin to grasp just how essential and beneficial salt was and is to human existence, we begin to grasp the value Jesus has given us. Christians are essential and beneficial to humanity’s existence. Accounts like Abraham pleading for Sodom (Gen 18:16-33) remind us that God sometimes only lets a nation or city survive or thrive for the sake of the Christians who live there or whose lives are affected by it. The apostle Paul reminds us that people cannot be saved without the witness of the gospel from Christians (Rom 10:11-17). It is true that we are worthless by nature (Rom 3:12); in Christ, however, God has made us indispensable.
3. Salt was known for its purifying character. We purify by exposing our own and the world’s impurities. We share God’s law and expose sin. C. F. W. Walther hit on this aspect of salt when he said (Law and Gospel, 25th lecture):
   

   [Preachers of the Word] remember that Jesus Christ said to His dear disciples not only “You are the light of the world” but also “You are the salt of the earth,” that is, not only are you to proclaim the truth, but you also need to salt the world [that is] full of sins and errors. You need to sprinkle stinging salt on the world to prevent its corruption.

   But we also share the good news of Jesus to have those impurities cleansed. We purify by bringing our children to the baptismal font, where their sins past, present, and future are washed away.

4. Salt was known for its seasoning character. We season the world by injecting purpose and meaning into an otherwise meaningless existence (Ecc 1:2). The eight hours of putting plastic sleeves on one roll of tape after another get seasoned by Christians who see in their monotonous work both faithful service to their employer and love shown to their fellow humans by providing them with something they need. The ten hours of sitting on one’s backside behind the wheel of a semi get seasoned by Christians who give glory to Christ by obeying the government’s traffic laws, happily delivering their cargo to those who need it, and engaging in kind, meaningful, non-obscene conversations with other truckers over the CB radio, even talking about true religion when the opportunity arises. The examples of ways Christians can season are countless.
   
5. Salt was known for its preserving character. Salt and embalming fluids could only preserve people’s bodies, and that only after they were dead. By telling people about Jesus and praying for their eternal welfare, we preserve people’s bodies and souls for all eternity. After all, whoever lives and believes in Jesus will never die (Jn 11:26). The blessing of God spoken at the end of worship leaves people exiting church a mere five minutes old every Sunday, no matter how old their birth certificate says they are.
6. There was a saying in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day that went, “The salt of money is want” (Kethuboth 66b Baraitha). It meant that if you want to salt your money, that is, give permanence to it, you should lose it to charitable giving as much as possible. (The thought is similar to Jesus’ own in Luke 16:1-9.) “In the same way Jesus’ disciples are to be the salt of the earth. They should impart the value of eternity to humanity and thus make them to have eternal worth” (Strack & Billerbeck; see “For further reading” below).
7. Christian Scriver, in his book Treasury of the Soul, beautifully applied Jesus’ words to preachers, but his thoughts can just as easily be applied to any Christian. Scriver tied Jesus’ words to John the Baptist’s words in John 3:30 and said:
   

   The Lord calls [preachers of the Word] “the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13), and we know that salt dissolves and disappears as it is being used. So it must also be with preachers. They must gladly use all their strength for their task, decrease, and disappear as it were, if only they might discharge their office in an honest manner and win and preserve many souls for the Lord Jesus. They must be minded as that pious martyr who passionately loved his Savior and who, when he was condemned to be burned at the stake, said, “I will gladly and joyfully be consumed by the flames, if only a little flower should also grow out of my ashes to the honor of God and my Redeemer.”

The Warning

We must not forget, though, that Jesus immediately followed up his general statement with a specific warning: “But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”

People debate whether salt can actually lose its saltiness. Rabbi Joshua ben Hanania, who taught around 90 AD, implied very clearly that it could not (Bekoroth 8b). Pliny does mention a spring in Chaonia in Greece which produced an insipid salt. But the spring simply produced salt that way; it was not turned from salty salt into insipid salt.

But such debates miss the point anyway. Jesus is not making any scientific statement about whether salt can lose its saltiness. Otherwise we would have to say that he is talking about whether a person can lose his or her faith (clearly a person can lose it [1Co 10:12]), or about whether a person who has lost his faith can regain it (the Bible never excludes this possibility – Heb 6:4-6 is often translated poorly and has to be read carefully). Jesus is not talking about either. His point is that, if salt did lose its saltiness (whether possible or not), it would be worthless.

God has made us to be salt. As such, we have worth that cannot be overestimated. Do we want to spurn this worth? Do we want to take it for granted? Do we want to risk becoming worthless once again, becoming worthy only of being trampled underfoot?

If not, then let us treasure the gift in our possession that makes us the salt of the earth – the word of God. Let us read it and attend to it regularly and with prayer, asking God for the grace to live in such a way that reflects what he has made us to be in his Son.

Be sure to check out Part 2.

For further reading: Colossians 4:2-6; Commentary on Matthew 5:13-14; Pliny’s Natural History, Book 31, Chapters 39-45

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my good friend and brother in the ministry, Pastor John Dermé. Many of his thoughts were the springboard for my own. He’s also the one that directed me to Pliny.