Matthew 5:13-16, key point is that God’s light and God’s instruction shine out to the world to show the way to true life and Jesus is assuming and building on Isaiah’s word play and that’s going to play a key role in understanding what he means. Jesus calls his followers the salt of the land, the light of the world and a city set up on a mountain. Three images which are three metaphors, the salt of the land is named first and he tells a little parable, a little riddle about the salt and then he bundles together the metaphors of the light of the world and the city on the hill, those are really tightly bound together in the section of the Hebrew Bible that Jesus is hinting at. These images are about who Jesus imagines his followers are in the world, who they are to other people. Salt is the most universal item used across human cultures, foods or preservatives or flavors, but it does lots of different things, it has lots of different metaphorical associations.
In the Hebrew Bible, salt is described many times as a crucial element added to Israel’s animal sacrifices, animal sacrifices offered to God. The phrase called “the salt of the Covenant,” Israel’s Covenant with God is to be symbolized by a heap of salt, their relational agreement commitment to God. Salt is connected to purity, salt is often used to wash or purify things, undrinkable water is purified with salt, it’s the additive that’s used to bring out flavor, but in the pre-frig age, salt was a crucial preservative for both food and meat. The phrase eating salt with someone or sharing salt with someone is a phrase of being friends with them, shorthand for sharing a meal. In the New Testament, salt is linked with peace between people, Mark chapter 9, Jesus says, have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. In Greek mythology, salt is beloved by the gods, if salt makes food enjoyable for humans and if sacrifices are like offering food to the gods, then offer salt with the sacrifice. The fact that salt is added to sacrifices is a cross-cultural phenomenon in the ancient east.
But what does salt mean? Salt, how do we know which is the more precisely intended nuance, because what is Jesus saying, that we make the world taste a little bit better or we’re like the seasoning of the world or we are the way that the world will be preserved or if my followers live by my teachings, the world will be preserved or we are the way the world will be purified or we are the way God’s covenant with Israel is going to be embodied in a new generation. What does salt mean? One way to solve this riddle of the salt, is to notice that Jesus has paired the salt of the land, very closely with two other metaphors, the light of the world and city on the hill that shines its light out to the nations. Salt is connected in terms of meaning with the images of the light in the world and the city on the hill and that the light and the city on the hill have a very clear reference to a specific set of passages in the Hebrew Bible and if we understand those, those give us some backwards insight into the meanings of salt that Jesus likely had in mind.
There’s a fundamental, underlying kind of Hebrew pun that Jesus is working on here. In the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the book of the prophet Isaiah, there’s a key word play between the word light, which links all the way back to day one of Genesis, let there be light. The Hebrew word for light is “or,” but we can hear the rhyming of “or” and Torah. The or and Torah word play, Isaiah used that connection between light and God’s Torah in a key set of poems, but key point is that God’s light and God’s instruction shine out to the world to show the way to true life. Jesus is appealing to the book of Isaiah’s word play, when he references the light of the world and the city on the hill, this is a key motif that runs throughout the book of Isaiah from beginning to end, it begins most explicitly in Isaiah chapter 2.
Isaiah is building on the key metaphor of light as God’s life, goodness and order, bringing instruction and word, all of that from day one of Genesis, that idea is so buried in Isaiah’s consciousness, that it leaks out in his poetry. But here, he’s not thinking about the past, but about something God has in store for the future for his people Israel. The poem in Isaiah chapter 2, it will come about in the last days, that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the head of the mountains, it will be raised up above the hills and all the nations will river up to it and many peoples will say come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to house of the God of Jacob, that he may give us Torah, he may teach us concerning his ways, that we may walk in his paths, because the Torah will go forth out of Zion and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem. The scene is that Jerusalem and the temple, which was at the highest point of ancient Jerusalem, the point is that this hill, it’s cosmic significance, the role that God destines this hill and the temple on it to play, will make it like the highest of all the mountains.
Mountains are associated with places where earth reaches up to touch heaven and where heaven and earth overlap. Mountains are viewed in the Hebrew Bible symbolically as places where heaven and earth are one, which is why Eden is described as being a high and Holy mountain. The mountain of the Lord and actually there’s an illusion to the garden of Eden here, with all the nations rivering up to it. What Isaiah means in the poem, the nations will river up to it is, the nations are the river and they’re coming back up, they’re not flowing out. The river flowed out of Eden and split into four heads that watered the nations of the land, but now the nations are the river, they’re coming back in. When the nations go in, they’re going to get God’s Torah, God’s instruction reshapes the minds and hearts of the nations, Isaiah 2:4, he will bring justice between nations, he will render decisions, when we get the Divine Judge mediating peace between the nations, the nations will hammer their swords into plow blades. This is what it means when Torah goes out to the nations.
In the Hebrew Bible, salt is described many times as a crucial element added to Israel’s animal sacrifices, animal sacrifices offered to God. The phrase called “the salt of the Covenant,” Israel’s Covenant with God is to be symbolized by a heap of salt, their relational agreement commitment to God. Salt is connected to purity, salt is often used to wash or purify things, undrinkable water is purified with salt, it’s the additive that’s used to bring out flavor, but in the pre-frig age, salt was a crucial preservative for both food and meat. The phrase eating salt with someone or sharing salt with someone is a phrase of being friends with them, shorthand for sharing a meal. In the New Testament, salt is linked with peace between people, Mark chapter 9, Jesus says, have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. In Greek mythology, salt is beloved by the gods, if salt makes food enjoyable for humans and if sacrifices are like offering food to the gods, then offer salt with the sacrifice. The fact that salt is added to sacrifices is a cross-cultural phenomenon in the ancient east.
But what does salt mean? Salt, how do we know which is the more precisely intended nuance, because what is Jesus saying, that we make the world taste a little bit better or we’re like the seasoning of the world or we are the way that the world will be preserved or if my followers live by my teachings, the world will be preserved or we are the way the world will be purified or we are the way God’s covenant with Israel is going to be embodied in a new generation. What does salt mean? One way to solve this riddle of the salt, is to notice that Jesus has paired the salt of the land, very closely with two other metaphors, the light of the world and city on the hill that shines its light out to the nations. Salt is connected in terms of meaning with the images of the light in the world and the city on the hill and that the light and the city on the hill have a very clear reference to a specific set of passages in the Hebrew Bible and if we understand those, those give us some backwards insight into the meanings of salt that Jesus likely had in mind.
There’s a fundamental, underlying kind of Hebrew pun that Jesus is working on here. In the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the book of the prophet Isaiah, there’s a key word play between the word light, which links all the way back to day one of Genesis, let there be light. The Hebrew word for light is “or,” but we can hear the rhyming of “or” and Torah. The or and Torah word play, Isaiah used that connection between light and God’s Torah in a key set of poems, but key point is that God’s light and God’s instruction shine out to the world to show the way to true life. Jesus is appealing to the book of Isaiah’s word play, when he references the light of the world and the city on the hill, this is a key motif that runs throughout the book of Isaiah from beginning to end, it begins most explicitly in Isaiah chapter 2.
Isaiah is building on the key metaphor of light as God’s life, goodness and order, bringing instruction and word, all of that from day one of Genesis, that idea is so buried in Isaiah’s consciousness, that it leaks out in his poetry. But here, he’s not thinking about the past, but about something God has in store for the future for his people Israel. The poem in Isaiah chapter 2, it will come about in the last days, that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the head of the mountains, it will be raised up above the hills and all the nations will river up to it and many peoples will say come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to house of the God of Jacob, that he may give us Torah, he may teach us concerning his ways, that we may walk in his paths, because the Torah will go forth out of Zion and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem. The scene is that Jerusalem and the temple, which was at the highest point of ancient Jerusalem, the point is that this hill, it’s cosmic significance, the role that God destines this hill and the temple on it to play, will make it like the highest of all the mountains.
Mountains are associated with places where earth reaches up to touch heaven and where heaven and earth overlap. Mountains are viewed in the Hebrew Bible symbolically as places where heaven and earth are one, which is why Eden is described as being a high and Holy mountain. The mountain of the Lord and actually there’s an illusion to the garden of Eden here, with all the nations rivering up to it. What Isaiah means in the poem, the nations will river up to it is, the nations are the river and they’re coming back up, they’re not flowing out. The river flowed out of Eden and split into four heads that watered the nations of the land, but now the nations are the river, they’re coming back in. When the nations go in, they’re going to get God’s Torah, God’s instruction reshapes the minds and hearts of the nations, Isaiah 2:4, he will bring justice between nations, he will render decisions, when we get the Divine Judge mediating peace between the nations, the nations will hammer their swords into plow blades. This is what it means when Torah goes out to the nations.
