Was procured by the Jews from the Dead Sea, wither from the immense hill or ridge of pure rock salt at its southwest extremity, or from that deposited on the shore by the natural evaporation. The Arabs obtain it in large cakes, two or three inches thick, and sell it in considerable quantities throughout Syria. It well-known preservative qualities, and its importance as a seasoning for food, Job 6:6, are implied in most of the passages where it is mentioned in Scripture: as in the miraculous healing of a fountain, 2 Kings 2:21; in the sprinkling of salt over the sacrifices consumed on God’s altar, Leviticus 2:13 Ezekiel 43:24 Mark 9:49; and its use in the sacred incense, Exodus 30:35. So also good men are "the salt of the earth," Matthew 5:13; and grace, or true wisdom, is the salt of language, Mark 9:50 Colossians 4:6. See also Ezekiel 16:4. To sow a land with salt, signifies its utter barrenness and desolation; a condition often illustrated in the Bible by allusions to the region of Sodom and Gomorrah, with its soil impregnated with salt, or covered with acrid and slimy pools, Deuteronomy 29.33; Job 39.9; Ezekiel 47.11; Zephaniah 2.9.

Salt is also the symbol of perpetuity and incorruption. Thus they said of a covenant, "It is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord," Numbers 18:19 2 Chronicles 13:5. It is also the symbol of hospitality; and of the fidelity due from servants, friends, guests, and officers, to those who maintain them or who receive them at their tables. The governors of the provinces beyond the Euphrates, writing to the king Artaxerxes, tell him, "Because we have maintenance from the king’s palace," Ezra 4:14.

VALLEY OF SALT. This place is memorable for the victories of David, 2 Samuel 8:13 1 Chronicles 18:12 Psalms 60:1-12, and of Amaziah, 2 Kings 14:7, over the Edomites. There can be little doubt that the name designates the broad deep valley El-Ghor, prolonged some eight miles south of the Dead Sea to the chalky cliffs called Akrabbim. Like all this region, it bears the marks of volcanic action, and has an air of extreme desolation. It is occasionally overflowed by the bitter waters of that sea, which rise to the height of fifteen feet. The driftwood on the margin of the valley, which indicates this rise of the water, is so impregnated with salt that it will not burn; and on the northwest side of the valley lies a mountain of salt. Parts of this plain are white with salt; others are swampy, or marked by sluggish streams or standing pools of brackish water. The southern part is covered in part with tamarisks and coarse shrubbery. Some travellers have found here quicksand pits in which camels and horses have been swallowed up and lost, Genesis 14:10 Zephaniah 2:9. See JORDAN and SEA 3.

Used to season food (Job 6:6), and mixed with the fodder of cattle (Isaiah 30:24, "clean;" in marg. of RSV "salted"). All meat-offerings were seasoned with salt (Leviticus 2:13). To eat salt with one is to partake of his hospitality, to derive subsistence from him; and hence he who did so was bound to look after his host's interests (Ezra 4:14, "We have maintenance from the king's palace;" A.V. marg., "We are salted with the salt of the palace;" RSV, "We eat the salt of the palace").

A "covenant of salt" (Numbers 18:19; 2Chr 13:5) was a covenant of perpetual obligation. New-born children were rubbed with salt (Ezekiel 16:4). Disciples are likened unto salt, with reference to its cleansing and preserving uses (Matthew 5:13). When Abimelech took the city of Shechem, he sowed the place with salt, that it might always remain a barren soil (Judges 9:45). Sir Lyon Playfair argues, on scientific grounds, that under the generic name of "salt," in certain passages, we are to understand petroleum or its residue asphalt. Thus in Genesis 19:26 he would read "pillar of asphalt;" and in Matthew 5:13, instead of "salt," "petroleum," which loses its essence by exposure, as salt does not, and becomes asphalt, with which pavements were made.

The Jebel Usdum, to the south of the Dead Sea, is a mountain of rock salt about 7 miles long and from 2 to 3 miles wide and some hundreds of feet high.

SALT, n. Gr.; L. The radical sense is probably pungent, and if s is radical, the word belongs to the root of L. salio; but this is uncertain.

1. Common salt is the muriate of soda, a substance used for seasoning certain kinds of food, and for the preservation of meat, &c. It is found native in the earth, or it is produced by evaporation and crystallization from water impregnated with saline particles.

2. In chimistry, a body compounded of an acid united to some base, which may be either an alkali, an earth, or a metallic oxyd. Accordingly, salts are alkaline, earthy, or metallic. Many compounds of this kind, of which common salt, (muriate of soda,) is the most distinguished, exist in nature; but most of these, together with many others not known in nature, have been formed by the artificial combination of their elements. Their entire number exceeds 2000. When the acid and base mutually saturate each other, so that the individual properties of each are lost, the compound is a neutral salt; when the acid predominates, it is a super salt; and when the base predominates, it is a sub salt. Thus we have a subcarbonate, a carbonate, and a supercarbonate of potash.

3. Taste; sapor; smack.

We have some salt of our youth in us.

4. Wit; poignancy; as Attic salt.

SALT, a.

1. Having the taste of salt;impregnated with salt; as salt beef; salt water

2. Abounding with salt; as a salt land. Jer. 17.

3. Overflowed with salt water, or impregnated with it; as a salt marsh.

4. Growing on salt marsh or meadows and having the taste of salt; as salt grass or hay.

5. Producing salt water; as a salt spring.

6. Lecherous; slacious.

SALT, n.

1. The part of a river near the sea, where the water is salt.

2. A vessel for holding salt.

SALT, v.t.

1. To sprinkle, impregnate or season with salt; as, to salt fish, beef or pork.

2. To fill with salt between the timbers and planks, as a ship, for the preservation of the timber.

SALT, v.i. To deposit salt from a saline substance; as, the brine begins to salt. Used by manufacturers.

SALT, n. A leap; the act of jumping. Not in use.

Indispensable as salt is to ourselves, it was even more so to the Hebrews, being to them not only an appetizing condiment in the food both of man, (Job 11:6) and beset, (Isaiah 30:24) see margin, and a valuable antidote to the effects of the heat of the climate on animal food, but also entering largely into the religious services of the Jews as an accompaniment to the various offerings presented on the altar. (Leviticus 2:13) They possessed an inexhaustible and ready supply of it on the southern shores of the Dead Sea. [SEA, THE SALT] There is one mountain here called Jebel Usdum, seven miles long and several hundred feet high, which is composed almost entirely of salt. The Jews appear to have distinguished between rock-salt and that which was gained by evaporation as the Talmudists particularize one species (probably the latter) as the "salt of Sodom." The salt-pits formed an important source of revenue to the rulers of the country, and Antiochus conferred a valuable boon on Jerusalem by presenting the city with 375 bushels of salt for the temple service. As one of the most essential articles of diet, salt symbolized hospitality; as an antiseptic, durability, fidelity and purity. Hence the expression "covenant of salt," (Leviticus 2:13; Numbers 18:19; 2 Chronicles 13:5) as betokening an indissoluble alliance between friends; and again the expression "salted with the salt of the palace." (Ezra 4:14) not necessarily meaning that they had "maintenance from the palace," as Authorized Version has it, but that they were bound by sacred obligations fidelity to the king. So in the present day, "to eat bread and salt together" is an expression for a league of mutual amity. It was probably with a view to keep this idea prominently before the minds of the Jews that the use of salt was enjoined on the Israelites in their offerings to God.