Salt

Today the discussion at a Bible Study came around to historical kingdom conquests. Cheryl, a friend, shared her husband John's teaching that conquered land was sometimes covered in salt as a way to prevent anything from growing on it again. The Lord piqued my spirit.

The Ancient Near East practice of salting the earth (or sowing with salt) was the ritual spreading of salt, brimstone (archaic word for sulfur), and/or nettles on land razed by conquerors. This was commonly done when a treaty or covenant was broken (Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, Weinfeld).

Salt has been used in many cultures as a valuable commodity. The word salary comes from an ancient word meaning “salt-money,” referring to a Roman soldier’s allowance for the purchase of salt. Someone who earns his pay is still said to be “worth his salt.” In the ancient world, ingesting salt was a way to make an agreement legally binding. If two parties entered into an agreement, they would eat salt together in the presence of witnesses, and that act would bind their contract (gotquestions.org).

• 2 Chronicles 13:4-5 (ESV) 4 Then Abijah stood up on Mount Zemaraim that is in the hill country of Ephraim and said, “Hear me, O Jeroboam and all Israel! 5 Ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt?

• Leviticus 2:13 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.

The Hebrew word "herem" is often used for "ban" or "utter destruction". (encyclopedia.com) Deuteronomy 20 (click to read) outlines Yahweh's Laws for Israel in Warfare:

In far nations: offer surrender to the city first. If they agree, all those in the city will be subject to forced labor and service. If they make war; spare the women, children, livestock and goods to take for Israel.

For nations where The Lord is Giving Israel the land for inheritance: devote to utter destruction.

The purpose: to eliminate the risk of cultural contamination of the abominable practices of idolatry. In Richard Dawkins 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, chapter 11 is "Memes: the new replicators." Richard Dawkins introduces the concept of a meme as a unit of cultural transmission, analogous to the gene in biological evolution. Dawkins defines a meme as a cultural replicator that propagates from brain to brain through imitation, much like genes propagate through biological reproduction. (thetorah.com) Did you know that's where the term "meme" came from? From this 1976 book? The idea of cultural diffusion is ancient, meme is just a modern moniker.

Herem can be seen as "excluded from use". Apparently sometimes it means excluding for Yahweh's use, such as consecrating / separating / devoting to Yahweh as Leviticus 27:28-29 (link). Herem can apply to banning or devoting people to destruction, as Exodus 22:20 (link). But in the context of salting the earth, herem is a war on property. Devoting the land to utter destruction. (jewishencyclopedia.com)

In the Tanak (the canonical collection of Hebrew Scriptures; five books of Moses, books of prophets, and eleven books of writings), Yahweh Instructs Israel in this practice. And Israel carries it out.

• Deuteronomy 13:16 You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again.

• Zephaniah 2:9 Therefore, as I live,” declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Moab shall become like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a land possessed by nettles and salt pits, and a waste forever. The remnant of my people shall plunder them, and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.”

• Jeremiah 17:6 He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

• Judges 9:45 And Abimelech fought against the city all that day. He captured the city and killed the people who were in it, and he razed the city and sowed it with salt.

Sulfur / brimstone and fire are Scripturally associated with God's Wrath and Judgement. Pitch, also called bitumen, is basically tar; a flammable substance associated likewise.

• Genesis 14:10 Now the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country.

• Isaiah 34:9 And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch.

• Genesis 19:24-25 24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

• Revelation 20:10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

The final herem; "salting of the earth":

• 2 Peter 3:7 & 10 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

  10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

• Revelation 21:1 The New Heaven and the New Earth Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

So....salting the earth, herem, is Divine Judgment resulting in the total destruction of the enemy, his goods, and sometimes the land, at the conclusion of a campaign... a mode of secluding and rendering harmless anything imperiling the religious life of the nation . Resulting in the uncompromising consecration of property and dedication of the property to God without possibility of recall or redemption. *

The final campaigns will be Armageddon, and the Final Victory at the end of the Millennial Reign of Christ.

Adds a whole new layer to "You are the salt of the earth", doesn't it, saints?

In Jesus's name,

Christy Hale

* (Joshua, J Soggins and A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy, S.R. Driver and Understanding the Herem, JPU Lilley).