The Salt of the Earth
We are the salt!
Salt was used to season food (Job 6:6), and mixed with the fodder of cattle (Isaiah 30:24). All meat-offerings were seasoned with salt (Leviticus 2:13). To eat salt with someone was to partake of his or her hospitality, to derive subsistence from him; and hence he who did so was bound to look after his host’s interests. Ezra 4:14 reads: “We have maintenance from the king’s palace” (KJV), or “We share the salt of the palace” (NRSV).
A “covenant of salt” (Numbers 18:19; 2 Chronicles 13:5) was a covenant of perpetual obligation. Newborn children were rubbed with salt (Ezekiel 16:4). In our text-verse, disciples are likened unto salt, with reference to its cleansing and preserving uses. A number of years ago, Sir Lyon Playfair, a biblical writer, argued on scientific grounds that under the generic name of “salt” in certain passages, the substance mentioned is actually petroleum or its residue asphalt. Thus in Genesis 19:26 it 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, from which pavements were made.
Someone who is referred to as the “salt of the earth” has a basic, fundamental goodness; the phrase can be used to describe any good person.