Taken and adapted from, “A Covenant of Salt”
Written by, H.K. Trumbull.
[I am probably a lot like many of you, for I enjoy peeking into books with new thoughts, new explanations, and new understandings that ground me, and mature me in my Christian thought, and for me this was one of those books. I wish I could say that I have brought forth even a tenth of what the author enumerated, but I cannot. For the author uses evidence from tidbits of information from all around the world, and I have tried to content myself here to condensing that into just some of the information from bible times and bible lands. However, like a good theology professor in Seminary class, every once in a while, some little bit of juicy knowledge slips through his strict outline, and series of “ah’s” appear in your mind, as you begin in putting all the pieces together on things that you had deemed unrelated… So it is here. As you read, new ideas and new understandings will present themselves to you, and I think that you will gain insights you never had before. Enjoy! –MWP]
A “covenant of salt” seems to stand quite by itself in the Bible record…
Covenants made in blood, and again as celebrated by sharing a common meal, and by the exchange of weapons and clothing, and in various other ways, are of frequent mention; but a covenant of salt is spoken of only three times, and in every one of these cases as if it were of peculiar and sacred significance; each case is unique.
The Lord speaks of his covenant with Aaron and his sons, in the privileges of the priesthood in perpetuity, as such a covenant. To him he says: “All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the Lord, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, as a due for ever: it is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee.”1
Of the Lord’s covenant with David and his seed, in the rights and privileges of royalty, Abijah the king of Judah says to Jeroboam, the rival king of Israel: ” O Jeroboam and all Israel; ought ye not to know that the Lord, the God of Israel, gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?”2
Again, the Lord, through Moses, enjoins it upon the people of Israel to be faithful in the offering of sacrifices at his altar, according to the prescribed ritual. ” Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God,” he says, “to be lacking from thy meal offering: with all thine oblations thou shalt offer salt.”3
While the word “covenant” appears more than two hundred and fifty times in the Old Testament, it is a remarkable fact that the term “covenant of salt” occurs in only these three instances, and then in such obviously exceptional connections. The Lord’s covenant with Aaron and his seed in the priesthood, and with David and his seed in the kingship, is as a covenant of salt, perpetual and unalterable. And God’s people in all their holy offerings are to bear in mind that the salt is a vital element and factor, if they would come within the terms of the perpetual and unalterable covenant.
In the Bible, God speaks to men by means of human language; and in the figures of speech which he employs he makes use of terms which had and have a well-known significance among men. His employment of the term “covenant of salt” as implying permanency and unchangeableness to a degree unknown to men, except in a covenant of blood as a covenant of very life, is of unmistakable significance.
There are indeed incidental references, in another place in the Old Testament, to the prevailing primitive idea that salt-sharing is covenant-making. These references should not be overlooked.
In many lands, and in different ages, salt has been considered the possession of the government, or of the sovereign of the realm, to be controlled by the ruler, as a source of life, or as one of its necessaries, for his people. In consequence of this the receiving of salt from the king’s palace has been deemed a fresh obligation of fidelity on the part of his subjects. This is indicated in a Bible passage with reference to the rebuilding by Zerubbabel of the Temple at Jerusalem, under the edict of Cyrus, king of Persia. “The adversaries of Judah and Benjamin” protested against the work as a seditious act. In giving their reason for this course they said:” Now because we eat the salt of the palace [because we are bound to the king by a covenant of salt], and it is not meet for us to see the king’s dishonor, therefore have we sent and certified the king.”4
And so again when King Darius showed his confidence in the Jews by directing a supply, from the royal treasury, of material for sacrifices at the Temple, and a renewal of the means of covenanting, he declared: “Moreover I make a decree what ye shall do to these elders of the Jews for the building of this house of God: that of the king’s goods, even of the tribute beyond the river, expenses be given with all diligence unto these men, that they be not hindered. And that which they have need of, both young bullocks, and rams, and lambs, for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the word of the priests which are at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail: that they may offer sacrifices of sweet savor unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons.”5
And again, in further detail: “Unto a hundred talents of silver, and to a hundred measures of wheat, and to a hundred baths of wine, and to a hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much;”6 the more salt they took, the more surely and firmly they were bound.
NOTE ONE, BREAD AND SALT: Salt alone is a basis of an enduring covenant, but bread alone is not so. Yet in the oriental mind, bread and salt may be such a basis, because there is salt as well as bread there. So commonly does salt go with bread that it is the exception when they are not together. Our English Bible asks, at Job 6: 6, “Can that which hath no savor be eaten without salt? ” But the Septuagint reads: “Can bread be eaten without salt?”
NOTE TWO, BLOOD AND SALT: There are indications in the customs of primitive peoples that “blood” and “salt” are recognized as in some sense interchangeable in their natures, qualities, and uses. And in this, as in many another matter, the trend of modern science seems to be in the line of primitive indications.
Peoples who have not salt available are accustomed to substitute for it fresh blood, as though the essential properties of salt were obtainable in this way. An observant medical scientist, writing of his travels in eastern Equatorial Africa, tells of the habit of the Masai people of drinking the warm blood fresh from the bullocks they kill; and this he characterizes as “a wise though repulsive proceeding,” “as the blood thus drunk provided the salts so necessary in human economy; for the Masai do not partake of any salt in its common form.”7
The use of blood as food was forbidden to Noah and his sons after the Flood.8
A tradition of the Turkish or Tatar nations says that Noah’s son Japheth was their immediate ancestor, and that Toutug, or Toumuk, a grandson of Japheth, discovered salt as an article of diet by accidentally dropping a morsel of food on to salt earth, and thus becoming acquainted with the savor of salt,9 this carries back the traditional discovery of salt to the age when blood was first forbidden as food.
The correspondence of salt and blood in more primitive thought will perhaps throw light on a disputed reference on a fragment of Ennius to “salsas sanguis” (salted blood, or briny blood). It would seem that as the Jews held that the blood is the life, and the life is in the blood, similarly Greeks and Romans recognized the truth that salt is in the blood, and the blood is salt.
In light of this, In the second century there were Christian ascetics who refused to take wine in the Eucharist. Among these the Elkesaites and the Ebionites employed bread and salt instead of bread and wine. This seems to have been a recognition of the fact that salt, like wine, represented blood.10
As blood is synonymous with life in primitive thought and practice, and as salt has been shown to represent blood in the primitive mind, so salt seems to stand for life in many a form of primitive speech and in the world’s symbolism. When, indeed, we speak of salt as preserving flesh from corruption, we refer to the staying of the process of death by an added element of life; preserving by re-vivifying, rather than by embalming.
When Elisha, the prophet of Israel, was met by the men of Jericho, as he came from the scene of Elijah’s translation to enter upon his mission as the successor of Elijah and was told of the death-dealing power of the waters of the city, his words and action seemed to emphasize the correspondence of salt with life. “He said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast salt therein, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or miscarrying [of the land]. So the waters were healed [were restored to life] unto this day, according to the word of Elisha which he spake.”11
A spring of water is in itself so important to a primitive people that it is not to be wondered at that water is called the Gift of God, and that a living spring is looked at as in a sense divine, and that it has even been worshiped as a god among primitive peoples.12
When, therefore, salt, as the synonym of life or of blood, is found in a spring of living water, it is natural to recognize the spot as peculiarly favored of God.
There is said to be a salt lake in the mountain region of Kurdistan, which was changed from fresh water to salt, by the Apostle Peter, when he first came thither preaching Christianity. He wrought this change so that he could influence the people to accept his teaching through sharing his life by partaking of the salt. To this day the tradition remains, that, if the natives will bathe in that lake, they will renew their faith. Aside from the question of any basis of truth in the legend, it remains as a survival of the primitive idea of a real connection of shared salt with shared life.
A new-born child was at once washed and salted in many primitive cultures. If an Oriental seems lacking in life or wisdom, or is, as we would say, exceptionally “slow,” it is said of him, “He wasn’t salted when he was born.” This idea would seem to be included in the prophet’s reproach of Jerusalem: “Neither wast thou washed in water to cleanse thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.”13
A traveler in Asia Minor speaks of the practice among the Turkmans of the mother’s dipping a child two or three times into a skin of salt water, at the time of his naming. This would seem to be a primitive rite, and not a Christian one. The father of the child meanwhile eats honeyed cake, and drinks thickened milk, as milk is sometimes accepted by the Arabs as a substitute for salt, as the essential factor in the covenant of salt (the milha).
“There seem to be indications,” says W. Robertson Smith,14 “that many primitive peoples regard milk as a kind of equivalent for blood as containing a sacred life. Thus to eat a kid seethed in its mother’s milk might be taken as an equivalent to eating ‘with the blood,’ and be forbidden to the Hebrews15 along with the bloody sacraments of the heathen.”
The references of Jesus to salt would seem to have fuller meaning, if “salt” be understood as equivalent to “life.” Where he says to his disciples: ” Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men,”16 he would seem to remind them that they are the life of the world, if, indeed, they retain life in themselves. And where he says, “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with another,”17 he would call them to have life in themselves, and to join with others who have it, in making their life to be felt among their fellows.
An utterance attributed to Jesus, though not in the early manuscripts, which has been a puzzle to critics and commentators, possibly has light thrown on it in this view of salt as corresponding with life. Discoursing on life, and the wisdom of striving to attain or to enter into life, even at a loss of much that man might value here on earth, Jesus, according to some manuscripts, said, “For every one shall be salted with fire.”18 This sentence is disputed by some, not being found in all the more ancient MSS., and its meaning does not seem to be clear to any.19
It is obvious that whatever else “salted” here means, it does not mean “salted.” To salt is to mingle, or to accompany, with salt. Clearly, fire does not do that. The Greek is as vague, or as ambiguous, as the English. There must be a conventional or popular, a figurative or symbolical, meaning in which “salt” is here used. What can this be? “Fire” is here spoken of as the synonym, or equivalent, or parallel, of “salt.” In this figure, fire is to accomplish what salt performs; the work of salt is to be done by fire. In what sense can this be true?
Fire does consume and destroy the perishable20 and it does bring out and refine that which is permanent and precious;21 it does try and test and reveal the measure of real value in that which is submitted to it.22 In the testing time, “each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work shall abide which he built thereon [on the one Foundation], he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned he shall suffer loss: but he himself [who has built] shall be saved; yet as through fire.”23
The whole context of the passage in Mark’s Gospel indicates that Jesus is speaking of life. He is showing the way to attain to life. He points to the final testing of life by fire. As salt is shown to correspond with life, and as this seems to have been understood by his hearers, would they not have seen that Jesus was pointing out that the measure of life, or salt, the reminder of God’s covenant with his people, in every one of them, would be revealed in the testing of fire?
It is, indeed, because salt represents life, that salt was to accompany every sacrifice under the Jewish dispensation. Not death, but life, was an acceptable offering to God, according to the teachings of the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New.24
God wants “not yours, but you.”25 This was emphasized by priest and prophet in the history of the Jewish people, earlier and later. Paul re-echoed this primal thought when he appealed to Christians: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies [yourselves] a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”26 Without salt, without the symbol of life, no sacrifice was to be counted a fitting or acceptable offering at God’s altar.
In Oriental and primitive thought Salt and Sun are closely connected, even if they are not considered as identical. They stand together as Life and Light. Their mention side by side in various places tends to confirm this view of their remarkable correspondence. The similarity of their forms accords with the Oriental delight in a play upon words, even apart from the question of any similarity in their meanings.
This would seem to give added significance and force to the words of Jesus as to salt and light. If in the days of Jesus, it was held, as Pliny says, that there was nothing that could help the life of humanity like salt and sun, life and light, the disciples of Jesus must have recognized a peculiar meaning in the teachings of the Great Physician as he sent them out into the world to heal the sick, and raise the dead, and cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons,27 when he suggested that it was what they were, rather than what they did, that was to be the help of humanity. In the same teaching he said, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” “Ye are the light of the world.”28
The recognized meaning of these words in the days of Jesus intensified their importance at every use of them, as when it was said that “in Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Salt was blood; blood was life; salt was life; life was light; blood and salt and light were life.
Among folk-lore customs on both sides of the ocean, salt and a candle are carried across the threshold on moving in to a new house, as if representing life and light as needs in a new home. Sometimes the Bible also is included, as if in recognition of the true basis of all sacred covenanting.
SALT IN SACRIFICES
Salt seems to have been recognized as a vital element in sacrifices both in the teachings of the Bible and in the customs of the pagan world. In the Lord’s injunction to Israel, it is said unqualifiedly: “And every oblation of thy meal offering shalt thou sea son with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meal offering: with all thine oblations [offerings bloody or unbloody] thou shalt offer salt.”
An alternative reading of the words of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel refers to this custom when it says that “every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.” Josephus, in his “Antiquities of the Jews,” makes reference to the large quantities of salt required for sacrifices.29 This corresponds with the provision of the King of Persia for Jewish sacrifices, “salt without prescribing how much,”30 “a limitless or indefinite amount.
In the Hebrew text which the Septuagint translators had before them, salt is represented as always on the table of shewbread, and as an important factor in that memorial offering before the Lord. It reads: “And ye shall put upon the pile [of bread] pure frankincense and salt, and they shall be to the bread for a memorial lying before the Lord.”31 Philo Judaeus makes mention of this salt with the bread, on the sacred table in the Holy Place, and refers to the salt as a symbol of perpetuity.32
In the directions for the preparation of the holy incense for use by the priests in the services of the tabernacle, the fragrant gums and spices were to be “seasoned [or tempered together] with salt, pure and holy.”33 And this incense was for sacrificial offering.
It is still a custom among strict Jews to observe the rite of the covenant of salt at their family table, before every meal. The head of the house, having invoked the Divine blessing in these words, “Blessed be thou O Lord our God, King of the universe, who causest bread to grow out of the earth,” takes bread and breaks it in as many pieces as there are persons present. Having dipped each piece into salt, he hands a portion in turn to everyone, and they share it together. In cases where there is less strictness of ritual observance on the part of modern Jews, this ceremony is limited to the beginning of the Sabbath, at the Friday evening meal.
This might seem to be merely a renewal of the covenant which binds the members of the family to one another and to God; yet it evidently partakes of the nature of a sacrifice, and it is so understood by the more orthodox Jews. The primitive idea of an altar was a table of intercommunion with God, or with the gods. It was thus with the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Persians, the Arabs, the early inhabitants of North and South America, and with primitive peoples generally.34 Thus also the Bible would seem to count an altar and a table as synonymous. The prophet Malachi reproaches, in God’s name, the Jews for irreverence and sacrilege. “And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar. And ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible.”35
The Talmud emphasizes the home table of the Jew as the altar before the Lord, to be approached in sacrifice with the essential offering of salt. “As long as the Temple existed, the altar effected atonement, and now it is for the table of each man to effect atonement for him. It is for this reason that the description of the altar (in Ezekiel 41: 22) closes by saying, ‘And he said unto me, This is the table that is before the Lord.’”36
It would seem, therefore, that bread and salt are as the body and the blood, the flesh and the life, offered in sacrifice at the home table of the Jew, as formerly at the altar of intercommunion with God.37
This view of the household table as an altar has been recognized by many Jews. Picart38 says: “The German Jew sets bread and salt upon his table, but the loaf, if possible, must be whole. He cuts it without making a separation, takes it up with both his hands, sets it down upon the table, and blesses it. His guests answer, Amen. Afterwards he rubs it with salt, and whilst he is eating it, he is as silent as a Carthusian. The bread thus consecrated is distributed to all who are at table. If he drinks wine, he blesses it as he did the bread before; takes it in his right hand, lifts it up, and pronounces the benediction over it; and all other drink, water alone excepted, is consecrated in the same manner. The master of the family concludes with Psalm 23, and then everyone eats what he thinks convenient, without further ceremony. The ceremony of cutting the loaf without separation has the same reason to support it; and a passage from Psalm 10:3 is a voucher for its solidity. The master of the house holds the bread in both his hands, in commemoration of the ten precepts relating to corn; and each ringer is the representative of one of them.39 “The salt as the religious intention of it is typical of the ancient sacrifices. Meat without salt has no savor, which is proved from a passage in Job, chapter 6, verse 6.2 This is civil policy confirmed by religion.
“A modest deportment at table is much recommended; so likewise is temperance and sobriety. Their bread must be kept in a very neat place, and preserved with all imaginary care. They must talk but little, and with discretion at table, because, according to the opinion of the rabbis, the prophet Elijah, and each respective guest’s guardian angel, are present at all meals. Whenever that angel hears anything indecent uttered there, he retires, and a wicked one assumes his place. They never throw down bones of flesh or fish upon the ground; but, however, this caution is not the result of cleanliness only, but fear, lest they should hurt any of those invisible beings.40 “The knife that cuts their meat, must never touch what is made of milk;41 whatever, in short, strikes the senses in any manner, must be blessed. They never rise from the table without leaving something for the poor; but the knives must be removed before they return thanks, because it is written, ‘Thou shalt set no iron on the altar.’ Now a table is the representative of an altar, at saying grace before, or returning thanks after meal.”42
That the table was looked at as an altar among ancient peoples, is to be inferred from various proverbs and practices with reference to it. A comment on this is, that as the table was consecrated to God, whatever fell from it was not to be restored, but to be left, as was the gleaning of God’s fields, for the poor.43 When the Syrophoenician woman said to Jesus, “Yea, Lord: for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table,”44 She spoke in recognition of this primitive truth, that the crumbs from the table might be shared by whoever hungered.
Salt was essential to a sacrifice among the ancient Romans, as among the Hebrews. A cake made of coarsely ground spelt, or wheat, mingled with salt, was broken, or bruised, and sprinkled upon the head of the victim for sacrifice, upon the fire of the altar, and upon the sacrificial knife. Hence the term “immolation,” or sprinkling with this salted meal, came to be synonymous with sacrificing.45 Pliny, telling of the priceless value of salt, says of it in conclusion: “It is in our sacred rites, more especially, that its high importance is recognized, no offering ever being made unaccompanied by the salted cake. 46
Wellhausen, in treating of the remains of Arabian paganism,47 tells of the custom of the old priests of throwing salt into the fire of sacrifice, unperceived by the worshiper as he appealed to the gods in his oath, and of the consequent startling of the offerer by the up-leaping flames, as though under a divine impulse. Various popular sayings are cited as incidental proofs of this custom; the purport of them all being that salt in the fires of sacrifice is supposed to be an effective appeal to the gods.
Pliny says that “salt, regarded by itself, is naturally igneous, and yet it manifests an antipathy to fire, and flies from it.48 This would seem to be a reference to the tendency of salt to spring up, or flash and sparkle, when thrown into the flames.
It has indeed been suggested that the very name “salt” was derived (through saltus, “to leap”) from the tendency of this substance “to leap and explode when thrown upon fire.”49 If there be any probability in this suggestion, or in another, and more natural one, that saltus was from the same root as sal, “salt,” it is easy to see that the primitive mind might infer that such was the affinity of salt with the divine, that, when offered by fire, it leaped toward heaven, and so was understood to be peculiarly acceptable to God or to the gods, in sacrifice. The Latin verb salts has the twofold meaning “to salt” or “to sprinkle before sacrifice,” and “to leap, spring, bound, jump;” and the root sal would seem to be in the Latin and the Sanskrit alike.50 Similarly, the word “salacious,” or lustful, had this origin.
FAITHLESSNESS TO SALT
The fact that in its primitive conception a covenant of salt is a permanent and unalterable covenant, naturally suggests to the primitive mind the idea of treachery as faithlessness to salt. The Persian term for a “traitor” is namak haram, “untrue to salt,” “one faithless to salt;”51 and the same idea runs through the languages of the Oriental world.
Of course, there is no human bond which will guard human nature against all possible treachery. These references to the measure of fidelity among different peoples or tribes are an indication of the relative degree of faithfulness prevailing among them severally. Those who are faithless to salt cannot be depended on for anything. If a man would not be true to one who is of his own blood, of his own life, and to whom he is bound in a sacred covenant of which his God is a party, he could not be depended on in any emergency. The covenant of salt is all this in the thought of the primitive mind.
It was said by the ancient Jews that Sodom was destroyed because its inhabitants had been faithless to salt, in maltreating guests who had partaken of salt in their city. In a Talmudic comment on Lot’s wife, the record is: “Rabbi Isaac asked, ‘Why did she become a pillar of salt?’ ‘Because she had sinned through salt. For in the night in which the men came to Lot she went to her neighbors, and said to them, Give me salt, for we have guests. But her purpose was to make (the evil-minded) people of the city acquainted with the guests. Therefore, was she turned into a pillar of salt.'”52
This idea of foul treachery as equivalent to faithlessness in the matter of salt, seems to be perpetuated in Da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper, where Judas Iscariot is represented as having over
turned the salt-cellar.53 And even among English speaking peoples the spilling of salt between two persons is said to threaten a quarrel; as though they had already broken friendship.
In both the Old Testament and the New faithlessness to a formal covenant is reckoned a crime of peculiar enormity as distinct from any ordinary transgression of a specific law. Transgressing a covenant with the Lord is counted on the part of Israel much the same as worshiping the gods of the heathen. This is shown in repeated instances in the Old Testament.54 In the New Testament, Paul includes among the grossest evil-doers of paganism those who are “filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God,” and so down to “covenant-breakers,” and those “without natural affection,” as among the lowest and worst of all.55 This idea shows itself continually in records and traditions, sacred and secular.
And so we find that, in the primitive world’s thought, shared salt has preciousness and power because of what it represents and of what it symbolizes, as well as of what it is. Salt stands for and corresponds with, and it symbolizes, blood and life. As such it represents the supreme gift from the Supreme Giver.
Because of the tremendous significance of salt, when it is made use of as the means of a lasting union, the Covenant of Salt, –as a form or phase of the Blood Covenant, is a covenant fixed, permanent, and unchangeable, enduring forever.
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Reference Table
1 Numbers 18:19
2 2 Chronicles 13: 5
3 Leviticus 2:13
4 Ezra 4: 14
5 Ezra 6: 8-10
6 Ezra 7: 22
7 Thomson’s Through Masai Land, p. 430
8 Genesis 9: 4
9 Price’s Mohammedan History, II., 458
10 See Clementine, Homilies, IV. 6; XIII. 8; XIV. 1, 8; XIX. 25, cited in art. “Elkesai” in Smith and Wace’s Diet, of Christian Biog.
11 2 Kings 2: 19-22
12 See Kadesh-barnea, p. 36, and note, 298 f
13 Ezekiel 16: 4
14 Relig. of the Sem., p, 204, note; also Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 149, 150
15 Exod. 23: 19; 34: 26; Deut. 14: 21
16 Matt. 5: 13; Luke 14: 3
17 Mark 9: 50
18 Mark 9: 49. Comp. A.V. and R.V.
19 See notes and references in Nicoll’s Expositors’ Greek Testament; Lange’s Commentary; Meyer’s Commentary, in loco, etc.
20 Genesis 19: 24, 25; Exodus 9: 23, 24; Leviticus 10: 2; 13: 52-57; Matt. 3: 12; 7: 19; Luke 3: 17; John 15: 6,
21 Malachi 3: 2
22 1 Peter 1:7.
23 1 Cor. 3: 13-15.
24 See, “The Blood Covenant” passim.
25 2 Cor. 12: 14.
26 Romans 12:1.
27 Matthew 10:8
28 Matt. 5: 13, 14
29 Antiquities of the Jews, XII, iii, 3
30 Ezra 7: 21, 22
31 Swete’s Septuagint at Lev. 24: 7
32 De Victimis, Sect. 3
33 Exod. 30: 34, 35
34 Blood Covenant, pp. 167-190
35 Malachi 1: 6, 7
36 Tract B’rakhoth 55 a., cited by the Rev. Dr. M. Jastrow
37 Blood Covenant, pp. 350-355
38 Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World, I., 245. London, 1733
39 Buxtorf ex Talmud.
40 Dr. Kohler states that the reason for not throwing these fragments on the ground, is because the Jews would not disgrace what is regarded as a special gift of God.
41 Because meat and milk are never to be eaten together. See p. 62, supra. (Exod. 23: 19; 34: 26; Deut. 14: 21
42 Buxtorf ex Talmud, cap. Xii
43 Lev. 19: 9, 10; Deut. 24: 19-21
44 Matthew 15: 27
45 Harper’s Latin Dictionary, s. vv. “Immolate,” “Mola”
46 sine mola salso
47 Wellhausen’s Reste Arabischen Heidentumes, in Skizzen and Vorar beiten, III., 124, 131
48 Hist. Nat., XXXI., 45
49 See citation of Lennep, and Scheideus, in Richardson’s English Dictionary, s. v. “Salt”
50 See Harper’s Latin Dictionary, s. w. “sal,” “salio,” “saltus”
51 Quoted in Burder’s Oriental Customs, 2d ed., p. 77
52 Rev. Dr. Marcus Jastrow refers to this in an article on ” The Symbolical Meaning of Salt,” in The Sunday School Times for April 28, 1894.
53 It has indeed been questioned whether the overturned salt-cellar in Da Vinci’s picture, as shown in many an engraving of it, was in the original painting, as it is not to be seen there now. But it would seem clear that the copy of this painting by Da Vinci’s pupil, Marco d’Oggoni, in the Brera, shows the overturned salt-cellar, while the original painting has had several retouchings and renovations. (See Notes and Queries, 6th Series, Vol. X., p. 92 f
54 Gen. 17: 14; Deut. 17: 2-7; Josh. 7: 11-15; Judg. 2: 20-23; 2 Kings 18: 11, 12; Psa. 55: 19-21; Isa. 24: 5, 6; Jer. 11: 9-11; 34: 17-20; Hosea 6: 4-7; 8: 1.
55 Romans 1:31
Regeneration, Repentance and Reformation 