J. Brandon Meeks
You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt. (Lev 2:13)
Salt, while not that prominent in our thinking, was a regular part of Jewish ceremonial rites, covenant rituals, and contractual relationships.1 At first glance this doesn’t seem to be all that stimulating, so I recommend further glances before disengaging.
The old adage “familiarity breeds contempt” is too often true with regard to oft-read passages of Scripture. This seems to be the case with a famous section from the Sermon on the Mount.
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. (Matt 5:13)
The usual exposition goes something like this: “Jesus has likened his hearers to salt. We all know that salt functioned as a preservative in the ancient world. Thus, Jesus is telling his disciples that their role in that present evil age is to act as a preservative, stemming the rising tide of putrification and decay. Salt that has lost its ‘saltiness’ has no preserving ability. This means that we have to ‘stay salty’ in order to hold back the ever-encroaching corruption of the times.” This is likely the explanation with which you are most familiar.
Another interpretation suggests that the point is driving towards personal evangelism through thirst-induction—salvation through salivation, as it were. The argument runs thus: “Salt makes people thirsty. Jesus is teaching his disciples that their job is to live and behave in such a way as to create a spiritual thirst in unbelievers. Once they are thirsty, Jesus can bring relief to their parched souls.”
Still another interpretation supposes that Jesus is speaking of the worth of the disciples in the economy of grace. Such an argument may be stated this way: “Salt was a precious commodity in the Roman empire. Soldiers were often paid in salt. The word ‘salary’ comes from the word salarium, which refers to the salt-wage. Jesus is saying that his disciples are precious to him and that their worth is great indeed. If they fail to obey him, then they become worthless—as unsalty salt is worthless. Don’t be worthless.”
While these explanations may contain ideas that provide fodder for points of application, it seems that there is little that ties any of them to the biblical text itself. So what did Jesus mean when he said, “You are the salt of the earth?” We may be able to approach an answer if we consider both the structure of Matthew’s gospel and the significance of salt under the Old Covenant.
Matthew’s Gospel account is primarily Jewish in nature. The Jewish audience of this narrative likely would have recognized its Jewish characteristics. This gospel is for Israel, about Israel, and against Israel.
The Gospel of Matthew comes to the house of Israel as both a jeremiad and an evangel. The bad news is that their house is falling down. It is in a state of disrepair due to unbelief and willful neglect. Israel is in the process of trying to build a house for God, but this vain attempt to “raise the tabernacle of David” will ultimately lead to their downfall. They have placed all of their hopes in a house built upon sand. The election of Israel was an election for a particular vocation. They were called to embody God’s promises to Abraham through which the Lord would bless the world. They were chosen to be a “light unto the nations.” In all of this they failed. So their calling became their curse.
Matthew presents his story as a recapitulation of the history of Israel, but he does so with Jesus at the center as both True Israel and Israel’s True God.2 His opening salvo, “The book of the generations of Jesus,” hearkens back to the first book of the Bible. This “book of generations” is a “book of Genesis.” Matthew is writing a new Genesis by writing the story of a new creation. Matthew is a book of new beginnings.
This is not mere coincidence. The allusions to Genesis abound as Matthew continues his narrative account. He gives the genealogy of Jesus, which serves to remind us of the numerous genealogical accounts in Genesis. He then tells us of a miraculous birth, like those of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Then we are introduced to a dreamer named Joseph.
Matthew then moves from Genesis to Exodus. In his view, Israel has become another Egypt (a theme picked up by John in his Apocalypse). We meet a new “Pharaoh” named Herod who oppresses Israel and launches a holocaust against her infant sons. Matthew tells us that Jesus has to escape “by night” (an allusion to Exod 12:30). Matthew chooses a quote from Hosea 11:1, which speaks of the exodus of Israel from Egypt, to speak of the True Israel’s exodus to Egypt from the present Israel-become-Egypt.
Matthew then brings us to the banks of the Jordan where Jesus is baptized just as Israel was baptized in the Red Sea. Immediately following his baptism, Jesus is led into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days just as Israel was tempted for forty years in the wilderness. While there, Jesus quotes passages from Israel’s wilderness sojourn and proves himself to be the Faithful Son, the True Israel of God.
Then, as a new Moses, he ascends the mountain and instructs his disciples in a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Christ is both the Prophet like unto Moses and the embodiment of Torah. Like Moses, he lays before the Jews the choice between life and death, prosperity and curse. At the end of his sermon he prophesies, by way of parable, about the destruction of the house of Israel founded upon the shifting sands.
Matthew begins with creation, moves through the exodus, continues with the giving of the law, and then depicts Christ as a Greater David and Wiser Solomon before finally ending where the Old Testament ends in Israel’s Scriptures (2 Chronicles)—with a new commission. All of this serves to illustrate that for Matthew, Israel isn’t who his hearers imagined Israel to be. More still, Israel’s God isn’t as they imagined him to be, either.
When one comes to the Sermon on the Mount, one should see it situated in a particular way in the recapitulation of Israel’s history. Jesus, as True Israel and Israel’s True God, is reconstituting his people and grounding all of the former promises to Abraham in this new reality. God is rejecting unfaithful Israel and their house (both the physical descendants and the temple currently under construction) and is raising up a house for his name as he always intended to do.
The Sermon on the Mount deals with the categories one would expect to find in a Jewish context: civil, moral, and ritual. But they are not being abrogated; they are being fulfilled through Christ and his people. The old promises aren’t flattened; they are broadened. They will now encompass the entire world.
Just so, when Jesus mentions “salt and light,” he isn’t introducing new themes. He isn’t drawing primarily from Roman customs or the current pay-package of the centurions. He is using the language of tabernacle and temple. He deals in terms of Abrahamic promises and Mosaic procedures.
After the opening benediction in Matthew 5, Jesus takes us on a virtual tour of the tabernacle. He begins in the outer court with the salted sacrifice, moves into the Holy Place where the menorah is burning, and ends up in the Most Holy Place, laying hold upon Torah in order to write it upon the hearts of his hearers. This “temple movement” is crucial to understanding the allusions to salt and light.
Movement inward in the tabernacle and temple was always viewed as an ascension to the “holy mount” or the “mountain of the Lord.” Jesus uses this same progression when he speaks of the “salt of the land” and the “light of the world.” It is a movement upward, but then there is a discontinuity. This new tabernacle which Jesus is contracting is turned upside down and inside out. Instead of moving inward toward the inner sanctum, the movement is outward toward the world.
As has been noted, sacrifices under the Old Covenant were consecrated with salt. Salt was never used as a symbol of preservation, but it was often a symbol of purification. Even more, it was a symbol of permanence. Salt, as crystal fire, could not be burned and was not subject to temporal decay. Thus, it signified the fiery judgment which consumed and transformed the sacrifice, as well as the eternal covenant between God and his people. So salt speaks of purification and ratification.
When God made his covenant with Abraham, he promised that his inheritance would be like the burning sands and stars: a promise of land illuminated by innumerable offspring. Jesus preached that same promise again with fresh vigor in his mountaintop sermon. Abraham’s promised land is salted by the presence of God’s covenant people. The earth is purified through the redemptive righteousness embodied by the saints in the land. Their presence as salt serves as a constant reminder that God is keeping his promise to fill the land with righteousness by filling it with Abraham’s righteous seed. This fulfills the purpose to which Israel was originally called—to be the embodiment of God’s promises to Abraham to bless the world, to be a “light for all nations.”
But what of that salt which loses its flavor and is said to be useless? Our “saltiness” is tied to our obedience. The progression from sacrifice, to light of the world, to Torah is an explicit reminder of this. Interestingly, the phrase rendered “lost its savor” literally means “to become foolish.” This would be bizarre if we did not consider the larger scope of Jesus’ sermon. This preachment is primarily a warning against the folly of hearing without heeding. “Saltiness,” according to Jesus, is hearing and obeying the Word. In other words, a disobedient Christian is as useful as unsalty salt.
So Christ calls his people to “salt the land” by enacting a righteousness that acts justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God. As Christians bless when reviled and offer the shirt off their backs when their coats have been confiscated—when they turn the other cheek and go the second mile—God gives salt to heal the wounds of the world. In this way, Christians exhibit a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, a righteousness that can break the vicious cycle of sin.
God has given Christ the world. And Christ has given it to us so that we may, in an act of worship, render it up to him again full of righteousness and glory. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
J. Brandon Meeks (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is a writer, studio musician, and sometime poet. He serves as Theologian-in-Residence at his Anglican Parish in Arkansas. He is the author of The Foolishness of God: Reclaiming Preaching in the Anglican Tradition and is a regular contributor to The North American Anglican.
Image: Cosimo Rosselli, Sermon on the Mount
- Exod 30:35; Ezek 43:24; Ezra 6:9; 2 Chron 13:5.[↩]
- See Peter Leithart’s excellent two-volume commentary The Gospel of Matthew through New Eyes, 2 vols. (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2018).[↩]