- SALT used to season food (Job 6:6), and mixed with the fodder of cattle
(Isaiah 30:24, “clean;” in marg. of R.V. “salted”). All meat-offerings were
seasoned with salt (Leviticus 2:13). To eat salt with one is to partake of
his hospitality, to derive subsistence from him; and hence he who did so
was bound to look after his host’s interests (Ezra 4:14, “We have
maintenance from the king’s palace;” A.V. marg., “We are salted with the
salt of the palace;” R.V., “We eat the salt of the palace”).
A “covenant of salt” (Numbers 18:19; 2 Chronicles 13:5) was a covenant
of perpetual obligation. New-born children were rubbed with salt (Ezekiel
16:4). Disciples are likened unto salt, with reference to its cleansing and
preserving uses (Matthew 5:13). When Abimelech took the city of
Shechem, he sowed the place with salt, that it might always remain a
barren soil (Judges 9:45). Sir Lyon Playfair argues, on scientific grounds,
that under the generic name of “salt,” in certain passages, we are to
understand petroleum or its residue asphalt. Thus in Genesis 19:26 he
would read “pillar of asphalt;” and in Matthew 5:13, instead of “salt,”
“petroleum,” which loses its essence by exposure, as salt does not, and
becomes asphalt, with which pavements were made.
The Jebel Usdum, to the south of the Dead Sea, is a mountain of rock salt
about 7 miles long and from 2 to 3 miles wide and some hundreds of feet
high.
- SALT SEA (Joshua 3:16). See DEAD SEA.
- SALT, THE CITY OF one of the cities of Judah (Joshua 15:62), probably
in the Valley of Salt, at the southern end of the Dead Sea. - SALT, VALLEY OF a place where it is said David smote the Syrians (2
Samuel 8:13). This valley (the’ Arabah) is between Judah and Edom on the
south of the Dead Sea. Hence some interpreters would insert the words,
“and he smote Edom,” after the words, “Syrians” in the above text. It is
conjectured that while David was leading his army against the Ammonites
and Syrians, the Edomites invaded the south of Judah, and that David sent
Joab or Abishai against them, who drove them back and finally subdued
Edom. (Comp. title to Psalm 60.)
Here also Amaziah “slew of Edom ten thousand men” (2 Kings 14:7;
comp. 8: 20-22 and 2 Chronicles 25:5-11).