A covenant of salt was a cultural practice in the ancient world in which one party would form a covenant by eating the salt of the other. Usually the party with the greater power or authority provided the salt. Salt was seen as extremely vital for life, so much so that among many cultures, it was thought to be the vital substance in the blood itself that made things alive. Thus, eating someone else's salt was seen as equally significant to drinking their blood, a variation of the idea of blood brothers, in which two people are thought to symbolically share in a common source of life by exchanging blood, as if the two lives had become one. The two parties involved in the covenant were bound by this sacred rite to be loyal to each other for life, ensuring that they do not harm one another, and look out for the other's interests. In the ancient Near East, salt was almost always an ingredient of bread. Thus eating bread with another person was a simple and common method of sharing salt in a meal, and was for all intents and purposes synonymous with making a covenant of salt.

In the Bible

The phrase covenant of salt () appears twice in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Book of Numbers The Book of Numbers (from Biblical Greek, Greek Ἀριθμοί, ''Arithmoi'', , ''Bəmīḏbar'', ; ) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final f ...

, God's priestly covenant with the Aaronic priesthood is said to be a covenant of salt. In the second book of Chronicles, God's covenant with the Davidic kings of Israel is also described as a covenant of salt. The commandments regarding grain offerings in the

Book of Leviticus The Book of Leviticus (, from , ; , , 'And He called'; ) is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. Many hypotheses presented by scholars as to its origins agree that it de ...

state "every offering of your grain offering you shall season with

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt." Although these are the only explicit mentions of the covenant of salt in the Bible, there are other verses which possibly allude to it. In Ezra 4, Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe write a letter to the king of Persia to try to stop the construction of the second temple. In verse 14 they write "Now because we receive support from the palace, it was not proper for us to see the king’s dishonor; therefore we have sent and informed the king". A more literal translation of the phrase 'we receive support' is 'we eat salt', indicating an obligation of loyalty to the king to look out for his best interests, since they ate his salt. In 1 Sam 18:3, David and Jonathan make a covenant. Though the text never explicitly states it, it might have been a covenant of salt, established by eating bread together. In 2 Sam 9:10, David shows kindness to Mephibosheth by letting him always eat bread at his table. Psalm 41:9 describes the hurt that the psalmist had received from their trusted friend, indicating that he had eaten of his bread.

References

{{Second Book of Chronicles Covenants in the Hebrew Bible Book of Leviticus Book of Numbers Books of Chronicles

In the Bible

See also

References