Covenant of Salt

You shall season your every offering of meal with salt; you shall not omit from your meal offering the salt of your covenant with God; with all your offerings you must offer salt.

מלח ברית [NEITHER SHALT THOU SUFFER] THE SALT OF THE COVENANT [… TO BE LACKING FROM MY MEAL OFFERING], because a covenant was established with the salt as far back as the six days of Creation when the lower waters (those of the oceans) received an assurance that they would be offered on the altar in the form of salt and also as water in the ceremony of “the libation of water” on the Feast of Tabernacles).‎

your God’s covenant I have made you party to a covenant, and I have bound you not to offer a worthless sacrifice. Nor may such a sacrifice be eaten: it would be disrespectful.

I am of the opinion that the significance is that the salt is water, which by the power of the sun that comes is made into salt, while the water saturates the Earth, impregnates it and makes plants flourish. Afterwards, salt cuts through every place that is not seeded and does not flourish. This covenant is a part of all of these processes, and the water and fire come in it. {Unclear phrase}. The first government of the kingdom of Hashem came like salt, which gives taste to all kinds of foods, and upheld it and agreed to its salting. The salt is like a covenant, so the Torah says, (2 Chronicles 13:5) "Surely you know that Hashem, the God of Israel, gave a kingdom to David over Israel eternally, for his descendants, a covenant of salt." Eternally, because this is also an aspect of [the] David[ic covenant]. Similarly it says about the offerings (Numbers 18:19), "it is an eternal covenant of salt," because the covenant of salt is in the world upheld. And I have already taught (Ramban on Exodus 31:13) to understand from our words in other places this exact phrase: "it is an eternal covenant."

ולא תשבית מלח, “and you must not omit salt;” the reason salt must not be omitted is that it is something that endures, and one of the most important symbolic features of animal sacrifice is to remind the Jewish people as well as individuals of the permanence of G–d’s covenant with us, and that it is not He who has to worry about being transient but we mortals. Seeing that He is not in need of food or drink, this legislation is clearly meant for the benefit of the Jewish people. When a person has sinned, and offered a sacrifice to further his atonement, knowing that after that he will be free of sin, he will be careful not to commit a careless act which resulted in his becoming obligated to cleanse himself from sin. If, on the other hand, he fails to take steps to obtain atonement, he will undoubtedly continue to commit sins as our sages have said in the Talmud tractate Kidushin, folio 20: “once a person has committed a sin-and has not repented and taken steps to rehabilitate himself,-the sin will no longer appear to him as having been a trespass against G–d, but he will treat it as if it had not even been a sin.” They explain this by comparing it to someone who has found a stain on his outer garment. Unless he takes steps to remove it, it will soon become something that he gets used to and before long his whole garment will become soiled. Concerning this subject, Solomon, in Kohelet, 9,8 says: בכל עת יהיו בגדיך לבנים, “be sure that your garments are white at all times;” our sages in the Talmud, tractate Makkot folio 2,add: “do not let them become stained by sin.” The Torah added numerous commandments, which the average person would perform even if the Torah had not specifically commanded him to do so. The reason is that it wished to give us additional opportunities to acquire spiritual merits.

במלח תמלח, “with salt you shall salt it.” It would have sufficed for the Torah to write ובכל מנחתך תתן מלח, or תמלח. Why did the Torah use the additional word במלח? The expression במלח תמלח, appears to mean that the salt should be of a controlled quantity and efficiency. On the one hand, it should be assimilated, i.e. dissolve in the moisture contained in the meat; on the other hand, it should not be so potent as to draw all the blood out from the meat. The practice of salting our meat nowadays is meant to simulate what occurred with the sacrificial meat.

According to the plain meaning of the text the reason for salting sacrificial meat is to ensure that its taste is not bland (compare Ibn Ezra). The Torah teaches us manners with this instruction. Although G’d, of course, does not “eat” the meat, it is not fitting for us to offer Him something as food on the altar which we ourselves would reject as unpalatable. One certainly would not serve unsalted meat to a king of flesh and blood (Berachot 58). The same idea has been expressed explicitly by the prophet Maleachi 1,8 where he asks bitingly: “would you dare offer something (of such inferior quality) to your governor?”

Maimonides’ thoughts on this subject, as expressed in his Moreh Nevuchim 3,46 are that the heathens removed all salt from their offerings and they would not offer it as a sacrifice precisely because it drew the blood from the meat; they considered the blood as the essence of the animal and did not want any of it to be wasted. The Torah wanted to counter these pagan theories; this is why the Torah commanded that every offering brought on G’d’s altar must be accompanied by some salt.

A Midrashic approach tinged with kabbalah: G’d had concluded a covenant with the waters in the “lower” regions of the universe .at the time these waters were separated from the “upper” waters (Genesis 1,7) that on Sukkot some of these waters laced with salt would be used as a libation on G’d’s altar. This is confirmed by Bereshit Rabbah 5,5 according to which the “lower” waters were called “crying waters” as they accepted the separation from the upper waters only after shedding salty tears. This is reflected in Job 28,11: “He dammed up the streams because they cried so much.” Rabbi Abba said that these waters separated from the upper waters by crying. The reason they cried was that they were saying “woe to us that we did not merit to ascend to the celestial regions where we would be close to our Creator.” In fact they were so upset that they dared to split “the deep” and threatened to ascend with their intrinsic power. G’d became angry at them and forced them back to their realm. We know all this from Isaiah 43,16: “Who made a road through the sea and a path through mighty waters.” Nonetheless, G’d told the “lower” waters that seeing their revolt was motivated by their desire to be closer to Him, He would not allow the upper waters to commence with the song of praise to Him until they had obtained permission from the “lower” waters to do so. This has been confirmed in Psalms 93,4: “more majestic than the sounds of the mighty waters of the sea is the voice of the Lord on high.” What is it that these waters say in order to signify their consent? אדיר במרום ה', “the Lord is majestic on high.” Furthermore, G’d promised the “lower” waters that when the time would come for the Israelites to offer sacrifices to Him on the altar, these would be accompanied by both salt and water libations. We have another Midrash in which the (terrestrial) world is described as divided into one third desert, one third habitable, and one third ocean. The oceans said to G’d: “the desert merited that the Torah was given in it; the habitable parts of earth merited that the Temple was erected on them; what are we going to get?” G’d responded saying that in the future, in G’d’s own good time, the Jewish people would include both salt and water in the sacrificial rites

A kabbalistic approach: salt contains two forces which are opposites of one another. They are fire and water, the power of warmth, i.e. the sun which dries out the water making the salt congeal, solidify. [I suppose the meaning is that through the heat of the sun which causes such water as the waters of the Dead Sea to evaporate, salt is isolated and becomes identifiable. Ed.] In other words, heat (fire), the opposite of water releases the power of the salt in the water. Seeing that water and fire are the two elements which ensure the existence and continuity of the universe, salt combines these two elements in a certain form. It is the catalyst, so to speak, for water and fire to interact. This is the reason why the Torah writes :

ולא תשבית מלח ברית ה' אלו-היך מעל מנחתך, “you may not discontinue the salt of your G’d’s covenant from upon your meal-offering.” The reason the Torah calls the salt “the covenant of the Lord,” is because by means of it the covenant will be maintained or destroyed. You may compare this to a statement in Bereshit Rabbah 14,15: “when G’d saw that man would not be able to survive if He ruled the universe by means of the attribute of Justice exclusively, He co-opted the attribute of Mercy;” in a similar way we may view “salt” either as the instrument of preserving matters or as being the instrument of destruction and making earth forever useless to man. An example was the brimstone and salt which fell on the cities of Sodom, etc. (Jeremiah 17,6; compare also Deut. 29,22). Still on the same words: “do not discontinue salt, etc.” Seeing the Torah had already written that every meal-offering consisting of fine flour has to have salt on it, and that every meat-offering has to have salt on it, why does the Torah once more write the above words? Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra writes that these latter words by the Torah are to be viewed as if they were an oath by G’d who says to The Jewish people: “I who have made a covenant with you beseech you on oath that you shall not discontinue the practice of adding salt to your meal-offerings.” Thus far Ibn Ezra. The Torah writes: “you shall offer salt with every one of your sacrifices” as otherwise we would have thought that only meal-offerings such as the showbreads, etc., require that they be salted or accompanied by salt, and that this is the reason the Torah mentioned salt always in connection with the מנחה, the meal-offering. To avoid such an error, the Torah had to write a line saying that salt is to be part of every offering.