A popular question is whether salt ever expires. Cartons of table salt have an expiration date, after all. But salt never expires. It just keeps on being salt, for thousands, and even millions of years. In fact, it was probably sitting in the ground for a couple million years before it was put in a container for you to buy. Salt does not expire and it does not lose its taste. It remains salty. A 50 year old container of salt will still taste salty and will still be safe to use. And yet, one of the most famous quotes by Jesus in the Bible comes from the Sermon on the Mount: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Surely, Jesus knew that salt doesn’t lose it’s “savor” or flavor. So, why would he say such a thing?
This quote from Matthew 5:13 is most often assumed to refer to the preserving properties of salt or to salt being a symbol of purity. The idea is that Jesus wanted his followers to be like salt, something that preserves or prevents decay. His followers should help prevent the moral decay of society and be a positive force for good. They should, like salt, add to what is good in the world. Today, the idiom “salt of the earth” refers to a very good, honest, worthy and reliable person.
However, the above explanation of Jesus’ statement is probably a misunderstanding. Let’s look at the passage again:
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
The word “earth” in this passage could have referred to an oven, or more specifically a clay or “earth oven.” In Israel, salt has a high concentration of magnesium and in ancient times, blocks of salt were used as catalysts for fires in ovens to help slow-burning fuels like dung burn better. There are also references to the oven embers being covered with salt to preserve them during the night so that they could be used again in the morning.
So, when Jesus spoke of salt losing it’s “savour” he did not mean that salt loses its salty flavor. Instead, he may have been referring to salt losing its magnesium and thus its ability to help fires. Jesus was saying “once salt loses its ability to burn it is no longer good for anything but to be spread on roads.”
This makes more sense than supposing that Jesus thought salt actually lost it salty taste and then became worthless. If we insist that by savor Jesus meant flavor, then this would make no sense, as we would not blame salt for losing its flavor if used it for fire, it stopped working, and then was no good for other purposes.
The original word in Greek and Aramaic, replaced with savor, was mōranthē. This is said to mean “foolish, show one foolish; to become a fool, be made a fool; to become saltless, tasteless, inert.” According to the Wikipedia article for Matthew 5:23:
The literal translation of the Greek μωρανθῇ, mōranthē, “loses its savour”, is “becomes foolish”. In Aramaic the same term is used for losing savour and becoming foolish. Some have speculated that “became foolish” is thus a mistranslation by someone who did not realize the dual meaning of the Aramaic. Gundry feels that the idea of foolish salt is such “utter nonsense” that no translator would ever make such a mistake; he feels it is more likely that the Semitic expression had been assimilated into Greek and that becoming foolish was an expression for losing savour. English language translators universally accept that the verse is talking about flavor rather than intelligence. Some scholars do feel that this may be wordplay related to the Rabbinic use of salt as a metaphor for intelligence. 1
An alternate explanation seeks to explain why Jesus would say that salt loses its flavor by explaining that he was not saying this, but was instead speaking of something that was unthinkable or impossible. If the followers of Jesus were to stop being meek, righteous, merciful, etc. their purpose on Earth would stop being fulfilled and this would be as awful as salt losing its flavor. To me, this explanation is a stretch and does not square with another related passage found at Mark 9:49-50:
For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.
This passage is often said to primarily to refer to sacrifices being seasoned with salt before being burned at the altar. But it may also be, again, referring to the ability of salt to stoke a fire. By telling his followers to have salt within themselves, he was saying they should make things better, to be a catalyst for change, and they should keep this quality within them.
The ability of salt to “season” a fire would have been well-known and it is the most culturally important symbolism that Jesus could have been referring to, although it is repeatedly ignored by scholars. According to author John J. Pilch, writing in Salt for the earthen oven revisited:
De Langhe’s (1954:165–167) hypothesis about salt as a catalyst still appears to be the most culturally plausible basis for determining the symbolism of the salt sayings in the New Testament. Scholten (1935:114–117) seems to have been the first to publish this insight with illustrations. Palestinians from the 1st century placed flat plates of salt on the bottom of their earthen ovens to activate the fire. Salt had a catalytic-like effect on the fuel (dung), causing it to burn. After some years, the salt plates in the earthen oven underwent a chemical reaction due to the heat. The result was that the salt no longer facilitated the fire, but rather impeded and stifled the burning of the dung. It is in this sense that salt used for this purpose lost its saltness. 2
Note: this article is written from a cultural and historical context only and is not mean meant to offer a religious perspective.
- Wikipedia contributors. “Matthew 5:13.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 Oct. 2024. Web. 17 Jan. 2025.
- Pilch, J.J., 2011, ‘Salt for the earthen oven revisited’, HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 67(1), Art. #826, 5 pages. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v67i1.826