The Remarkable Covenant of Salt
By Emma Hildreth Adams
To most Bible readers the book of Leviticus presents few attractions. They bestow small patience and but scant time upon reading its twenty-seven chapters of most interesting laws, regulations, and instructions, which portray the ceremonial life God required of Israel upon their entrance into the land promised Abraham four hundred thirty years preceding. Some of these regulations—waiting for the time to be fulfilled—distinctly symbolized a momentous event yet to come—the advent, sufferings, and death of the Christ. Others applied definitely to the model family relations of that people; now restricting their diet in important details, now enjoining extreme tidiness in personal habits, now establishing guards and guides for high morals. Others demanded inflexible observance of the great Day of Atonement—full of deepest significance, and crowded with highest interests. Now they pictured, in attractive colors, the gracious rest of the seventh-year and fiftieth-year sabbaths. Now they painted in impressive hues the sorrow, the anguish of spirit, the desolation of heart, the sure withdrawing of God's blessing, which should quickly follow their sliding away into apostasy, the worshiping of gods formed by hands of men, the forgetting their masterful delivery from oppression in Egypt, the thrusting aside their miraculous entrance into Canaan. One of the simplest yet most attractive of these ceremonies was the presentation of a "meat-offering" to the Lord—by His command. In present-day acceptation of the term, this "meat-offering" contained no meat. It consisted simply of fine flour dressed carefully with pure olive-oil and sprinkled with fragrant frankincense. Notice: Every ingredient composing this "meat-offering"—the flour, oil, and aromatic element—was a product of the ground. No purer offering to the Creator could have been made by the hand of man. Every human heart ever offered has been tainted by sin. Oil in that day was used as butter now is. "Symbolically, it represented the influences of the divine Spirit, just as the incense was an emblem of grateful prayer." The fine flour typified Him who said to the trans-Galileans: "I am the bread of life. . . . If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever." The frankincense was a fragrant resin exuded by a tree of Arabia, and was used to produce the sweet-smelling savor so agreeable to Jehovah. The person who made the offering was to bring the pure, choice, typical constituents to the priest—one of Aaron's sons. From the fine flour the priest took but a handful, poured upon it some of the golden oil, and then sprinkled thereupon all of the sweet frankincense the offerer had brought. Dr. Adam Clarke thinks all the aromatic resin was burned because it could not become, for the priest, an article of diet, as did the unburned portion of the offering. The taking this tiny portion from the total offering was termed by Jehovah the taking "a memorial" thereof. It was placed upon the altar for burnt offerings and consumed completely. God esteemed this offering "a thing most holy of all the oblations made unto the Lord by fire." He forbade the mingling of honey and leaven with this oblation, saying, "No meat-offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire." Lev. 2:11. Both these articles are known to have been used in heathen religious rites of that day. Leaven serves as a symbol of simulation, of hypocrisy, and also of corruption, of putrefaction. A step of interesting significance in the transaction was the seasoning the "memorial" with salt. God gave the order, saying, "Every oblation of thy meat-offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering." Lev. 2:13. In several important respects the contribution of salt to the "meat-offering" added to the ceremony features of intense interest. First, it was a token to Aaron, and to his generations after him, that these reservations of food should never fail him. Nineteen years after the above date, the Lord, in giving to Aaron explicit directions as to what portions of special offerings, made by the children of Israel, himself and his family should retain for "meat"—food—said, "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, by a statute forever: it is a COVENANT OF SALT FOREVER before the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee." Salt was an emblem of harmony in thought, feeling, and purpose, of stable friendship, of an unbreakable covenant. Thus, when the priests ate the meat-offerings, they formed with God a "covenant of salt," bound themselves to faithful allegiance, to persistent service. Five centuries later in Israel's unenviable, darkly stained history, after the division of the nation into two kingdoms, there arose an occasion when the northern portion was sharply reminded of the to-day existing "covenant of salt" made by God with King David when the latter, conscious of his own highly favored circumstances, proposed to build in Jerusalem a house for the Lord "to dwell in." Standing upon an eminence of Mount Ephraim, near Bethel, King Abijah, leader of Judah's God-defended host that day—400,000 valiant men of war—cried to Israel's hostile general, at the head of 800,000 mighty men of valor (2 Chron. 13:3-12): "Hear me, thou Jeroboam, and all Israel! Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt! . . . O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper." In the great battle following they were defeated. We turn to the covenant made with David eighty-four years previously (2 Sam. 7:12, 16): "When thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, . . . and thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee; thy throne shall be established forever." In Psalm 89 occur these vastly significant words of God, referring distinctly to Christ, who is the seed, the descendant, the son of David, and with whom the covenant of salt will be fulfilled: "I have sworn unto David My servant, Thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all generations. . . . My mercy will I keep for him forevermore, and My covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven." It is easy to see why King Abijah called this mighty covenant with David a "covenant of salt." In the nature of things it is indestructible. Neither party thereto will ever infringe upon it, ever transgress it. Dr. Clarke says: "The grace of God through Christ is represented by salt. Through Him we must render all our service to God. He must never be lacking." "The waters of the sea never become sweet. So shall the dominion never depart from the house of David."