Part 7

That which is a means of life in one instance may be a means of death in another. A breath that might kindle a tiny spark into a living blaze might also extinguish a quivering flame. The breeze that gives life to fire in one case gives death to fire in the other. And fire itself proves death to that which is perishable, while it gives added value to that which is purified in the furnace flames. Salt, like fire, is a symbol both of life and of death. In different connections it is a preserver and a destroyer. "To the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life."[238]

[238] 2 Cor. 2 : 16.

Salt is spoken of in the Bible as destructive of vegetable life, and a barrier against new animal life. A piece of ground sown or strewed with salt is deemed dead land: "It is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein."[239] When Abimelech captured Shechem, "he beat down the city and sowed it with salt."[240] The Psalmist, speaking of the power and ways of God, declares:

"He turneth rivers into a wilderness, And watersprings into a thirsty ground; A fruitful land into a salt desert, For the wickedness of them that dwell therein."[241]

[239] Deut. 29 : 23.

[240] Judg. 9 : 45.

[241] Psa. 107 : 33, 34.

The prophet Jeremiah says of one who departs from God's service that he "shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited."[242] Ezekiel, foretelling a curse on the land of the Jews, says: "The marshes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given up to salt."[243] And Zephaniah declares that Moab shall become "a possession of nettles, and salt-pits, and a perpetual desolation."[244] Because there can be no fertility for new vegetable life, there is no room or hope for new animal life for land thus sown with salt and thus permanently sterile.

[242] Jer. 17 : 6.

[243] Ezek. 47 : 11.

[244] Zeph. 2 : 9.

The one great body of water that is called the Dead Sea is the saltest sea in the world. Five times the proportion of salt in the ocean is found in this inland sea of salt. "No fish can exist in the waters, nor is it proved that any low forms of life have been discovered there."[245] An ancient legend declared that birds could not even fly over its waters, because of the curse from heaven on its briny depths.[246] Yet this doomed and dead sea of salt is a source of life to man in its exhaustless supply of salt for his use. Preeminently is this salt of the Dead Sea a savor of life and of death.

[245] George Adam Smith's _Historical Geography of the Holy Land_, p. 502.

[246] Tacitus, _Hist._, v. 6, cited as above.

The salt of the ocean is the world's treasure. Without it the greater portion of the earth's inhabitants would perish for lack of what vivifies and preserves animal life. Yet because of the salt in the ocean the very water, which man and beast must have or perish of thirst, is useless to both man and beast. The cry in the "Ancient Mariner" is the cry of the human, always, on the ocean's surface:

"Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink: Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."

Water, which is the gift of God to the thirsty soul, mocks the thirsty soul when it brings with it salt, which is the representative of life. Salt in water is a savor of death unto death, while salt and water are also a savor of life unto life.

While salt as the equivalent of life is a symbol of permanency, it becomes, as the equivalent of death, a symbol of doom and destruction. Thus the prophet Isaiah, speaking of his salvation as sure and permanent, says: "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away [literally, shall be salted] like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner [or, like gnats]: but my salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished."[247]

[247] Isa. 51 : 6.

Life is in itself the destroyer of death, as light is the destroyer of darkness. Hence that which makes anew does away with that which was of old. When, therefore, salt or fire is spoken of as the destroyer of that which is not worthy of preservation, it is not to be wondered at that this power is possessed by an element that purifies and revivifies through the process of destruction. The ground of a destroyed and condemned city is guarded against a continuance of its old life of evil by being sown with salt, which is a savor from life unto life and from death unto death. The old heavens and the old earth which vanish away as by fire and salt,[248] are replaced by a new heaven and a new earth[249] which shall be enduring as gold tried in the fire, and as a covenant of salt forever.

[248] Isa. 34 : 4; 2 Peter 3 : 10-12.

[249] Isa. 51 : 16; 65 : 17; 66 : 22; 2 Peter 3 : 13.

There is a sense in which that which is devoted to God is thereby forbidden to the use of man. Thus land sown with salt may be counted as devoted and as destroyed, _devoted_ to God and _destroyed_ for man.[250] The Hebrew word _korban_ was applied to what had thus been dedicated and doomed.[251]

[250] See Num. 21 : 2, 3.

[251] Mark 7 : 11. See the Rev. Dr. Jastrow, in _The Sunday School Times_ for April 28, 1894; also W. Robertson Smith's _Religion of the Semites_, p. 435; also Nowack, _Lehrbuch der Hebræischen Archæologie_, II., 267.

Blood also is used in the twofold sense of life and of death, in different connections. Men say, "We are bound together by blood," and "We are of one blood," and "Blood is thicker than water." They say, also, "There is blood between us," and "Spilled blood cannot be gathered up," and "Blood is a barrier." Salt, that stands for blood, may similarly stand for life or for death, for peace or for discord. It is an old superstition that to put salt on another's plate is an evil omen. Hence the couplet:

"Help me to salt, Help me to sorrow!"

Yet even this portent of ill luck may be canceled by a repetition of the act, helping to a second portion of salt.[252] The taking of blood that becomes a barrier may be followed by the taking of blood as a bond of union. Shedding of blood is atoned for by sharing of blood.

[252] Henderson's _Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties_, p. 120. Thistleton Dyer's _Domestic Folk-Lore_, p. 104 f.

Even the spilling of salt, which is so dreaded in primitive thought, may, it is said, be rendered harmless if the person who was guilty of the mishap will carefully gather up the spilled salt with the blade of a knife, and throw it over his left shoulder, with an appropriate invocation.[253]

[253] Henderson, p. 120; Dyer, p. 104 f.; Napier, p. 139 f.

It is deemed dangerous to give away salt to a stranger; for because salt is as blood and as life, one must be careful lest he put his blood and his life in the power of an enemy.[254] Salt is essential to the preservation of human life; at the same time, salt is the destruction of human life if it be in too great quantity or proportion. Thus the seeming contradiction is only in seeming.

[254] Henderson, p. 217.

XV

MEANS OF A MERGED LIFE

All life is from the Author and Source of life. Only as two persons become partakers of a common life by each and both sharing in that which is in itself life, can they become one in the all-inclusive Life. Having life from the Source of life, they can merge their common possession in each other, and in that common Source. Such merging in a common life, with an appeal to and by the approval of God, or the gods, has been the root-idea of covenanting, in one way or another, from time immemorial, among all peoples, the world over.

In primitive thought, and in a sense in scientific fact, the blood is the life and the life is in the blood; hence they who share in each other's blood are sharers in a merged and common life. Covenanting in this way with a solemn appeal to God, or to the gods, has been a mode of sacred union from the earliest dawn of human history. Two thus covenanting are supposed to become of one being; the one is the other, and the two are one. Every form of sacrifice, Jewish, Egyptian, Assyrian, or ethnic, is in its primal thought either an evidence and a reminder of an existing covenant between the offerer and the Deity approached, or an appeal and an outreaching for a covenant to be consummated.[255]

[255] Compare, for example, Psa. 50 : 5, 16; Hos. 1 : 10; Rom. 9 : 26.

Salt is counted as the equivalent of blood and of life, both in primitive thought and, in a sense, in scientific fact; therefore salt, like blood, has been deemed a nexus of a lasting covenant, as nothing can be which is not life or its equivalent. Only as two persons are sharers of a common life can they be supposed to have merged their separate identity in that dual union.

And so we find that, in the primitive world's thought, shared salt has preciousness and power because of what it represents and of what it symbolizes, as well as of what it is. Salt stands for and corresponds with, and it symbolizes, blood and life. As such it represents the supreme gift from the Supreme Giver. Because of this significance of salt, when made use of as the means of a lasting union, the Covenant of Salt, as a form or phase of the Blood Covenant, is a covenant fixed, permanent, and unchangeable, enduring forever.

SUPPLEMENT

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AS A COVENANT OF LOVE

All of us are familiar with the Ten Commandments, given from God on two tables, or tablets, of stone, to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai.[256] But not all of us are accustomed to think of these Ten Commandments as ten separate clauses of a loving covenant between God and his chosen people, recorded on stone tablets for their permanent preservation. Yet these witnessing tablets are repeatedly called in the Bible "the tables of the covenant,"[257] and "tables of testimony,"[258] not the tables of the commandments; while the chest or casket which contained them is called "the ark of the covenant,"[259] and "the ark of the testimony,"[260] not the ark of the commandments.

[256] Exod. 20 : 1-17; Deut. 5 : 1-22.

[257] Deut. 9 : 15.

[258] Exod. 32 : 15; 34 : 29.

[259] Num. 14 : 44; Deut. 10 : 8; 31 : 9, 25, 26; Josh. 3 : 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17; 4 : 7, 9, 18; 6 : 6, 8; 8 : 33; Judg. 20 : 27; 1 Sam. 4 : 3-5; 2 Sam. 15 : 24; 1 Kings 3 : 15; 6 : 19; 8 : 1, 6; 1 Chron. 15 : 25, 26, 28, 29; 16 : 6, 37; 17 : 1; 22 : 19; 28 : 2, 18; 2 Chron. 5 : 2, 7; Jer. 3 : 16.

[260] Exod. 25 : 22; 26 : 33, 34; 30 : 6, 26; 31 : 7; 39 : 35; 40 : 3, 5, 21; Num. 4 : 5; 7 : 89; Josh. 4 : 16.

There is obviously a world-wide difference between a loving covenant that binds two parties to each other in mutual affection and fidelity, and a series of arbitrary commandments enjoined by a sovereign upon his subjects; between a compact of union, having its statement of promises on the one hand and of responsibilities on the other, and an instrument that asserts the rights of the ruler and defines the duties of the ruled. In our estimate of the Decalogue we have made too much of the _law_ element, and too little of the element of _love_. As a consequence it has not been easy for us to see how it is that God's law is love, and that love is the fulfilling of God's law. But the Ten Commandments _are_ a simple record of God's loving covenant with his people, and they are _not_ the arbitrary commandings of God to his subjects. They indicate the inevitable limits within which God and his people can be in loving union, rather than declare the limits of dutiful obedience on the part of those who would be God's faithful subjects. A close examination of the Decalogue will show that this is its nature and scope.

It must be borne in mind, in our Bible reading, that the Bible was originally written by Orientals for Orientals, and that it is to be looked at in the light of Oriental manners and customs, and Oriental modes of speech, in order to its fullest understanding. Hence when we find the term "covenant," or the term "commandment," in the Bible, we are to inquire into the Oriental meaning of that term, so that we may know the sense in which it was employed by the Bible writers.

Now a "covenant" among Orientals is, and always has been, a sacred compact binding two parties in loving agreement. Oriental covenants are made in various forms and by various ceremonies. The most sacred of all forms of covenanting in the East is by two persons commingling their own blood, by its drinking or by its inter-transfusing, in order that they may come into a communion of very life.[261] Two persons who wish to become as one in a loving blood-friendship will open each a vein in his own arm, and allow the blood to flow into a common vessel, from which both parties will drink of the commingled blood. Or, again, each person will open a vein in one of his hands, and the bleeding hands will be clasped together so that the blood from the one shall find its way into the veins of the other. Or, yet again, the two will share together the substitute blood of a sacred animal. Usually, in such a case, a written compact is signed by each party and given to the other, with the stamp of the writer's blood upon it as a part of the ceremony of covenanting; and this writing is carefully encased in a small packet or casket, and guarded by its holder as his very life. It is in the light of such customs as this that we are to read of the sacred covenant entered into between God and his Oriental people.

[261] See _The Blood Covenant_.

It was at the foot of Mount Sinai that Moses came before the people of Israel with God's proffer to them of a covenant, whereby they should bear his name and be known as his people. "And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient."[262] Then it was that Moses took of substitute blood and divided it into two portions, one half to be sprinkled on the altar God-ward, and the other half to be sprinkled on the people; and Moses said: "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words"--or, as the margin of the Revised Version has it, "upon all these conditions."[263]

[262] Exod. 24 : 7.

[263] Exod. 24 : 8.

Moreover, we are told, in the Epistle to the Hebrews,[264] that Moses sprinkled the blood upon the record, or book, of the covenant, as well as upon the people. It was after this--after the breach and the renewal of the covenant between Israel and God--that the stone tablets on which the covenant itself had a permanent record were encased in a casket, or an "ark,"[265] which was thenceforward guarded sacredly as containing the charter of Israel's nationality, the witness, the evidence, the testimony, of the loving covenant between God and his people.

[264] Heb. 9 : 19.

[265] Exod. 40 : 20.

But you may ask, Did not the tables of stone bear a record of specific commandments, rather than of articles of a covenant? And are not the words there recorded specifically called in the Bible the "Ten Commandments"? Look for yourselves, and see. It is true that our English Bible speaks of the Ten Commandments recorded on these tables of stone; but the word here translated "commandments" is more literally to be rendered "words,"[266] as indeed it is given in the margin of the Revised Version; and it is applicable to any declaration, injunction, or charge, made by one to another. It is by no means to be understood as simply an arbitrary mandate from an absolute sovereign to his subjects. Looking at the Ten Commandments as a set of moral laws covering man's duties to God and to his fellows, they seem strangely defective, when we find among them no command to pray to or to praise God, nor any command to give sympathy or assistance to man. But when we look at them as clauses of a loving covenant, indicating the scope and limits of relations within which a child of God's duties God-ward and man-ward are to be exercised, we find that they are far-reaching and all-inclusive. Looking at them as the tables of the covenant between God and his people in the light of Oriental views of covenanting, we can see a great deal more in the words on those tables than when we look at them as the tables of the commandments,--in the light of our Western ideas of commandings.

[266] Exod. 34 : 28.

A covenant involves the idea of a twofold agreement between the parties making it. Even though God himself be one of the parties, he will not refuse to be explicit in his words of covenanting. And so we find it to be in the record on the tables of the covenant which were given to Moses at Mount Sinai. We call the opening words of that record the "Preface to the Ten Commandments;" but they are more properly God's covenanting words with his people. "I am Jehovah thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."[267] The very name "Jehovah" includes the idea of a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God. The declaration of Jehovah's eternally existing personality as Jehovah is in itself a covenant promise, for all time to come, to those who are his covenant people. It is as though he were to say: "I, who was and am, and am to be, the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever, will be your God unfailingly. As I have given you a loving deliverance out of Egyptian bondage, so I am ever ready to deliver you from every evil that enthralls you."

[267] Exod. 20 : 2.

Man, when he promises for the future, needs to say, "I will do;" but God can say nothing stronger than "I do," or than "I am." Thus the promise of promises of Jesus to his disciples as their ever-present, all-sustaining Lord, is, "Lo, I am with you alway;"[268] not "Lo, I _will be_," but "Lo, I _am_." And so it is that God's covenant promise to Israel, to be their loving, guarding, and guiding God for all time to come, is in the words: "I am Jehovah thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."[269] And this is the promise of "the party of the first part," as we would say in modern legal parlance, in this covenant between God and his people Israel.

[268] Matt. 28 : 20.

[269] Exod. 20 : 2.

Then there follow the covenant agreements of God's people, as "the party of the second part" in this loving compact. As it is God who prescribes or defines the terms on which this covenant is to be made, the indication of those terms is mainly in the form of such prohibitions as will distinguish the people of God from other peoples about them, in the bearing of that people toward God's personality, toward God's institutions, and toward God's representatives. This is all that is needed in the fundamental articles of covenanting. The details of specific duties may be defined in special enactments under the terms of this covenant, or they may be inferred from its spirit.

The first requirement is, that this covenanting God shall be recognized as the only God; that no other god shall be conceded a place in God's universe. And this requirement is vital to any such covenant. A divided heart is no heart at all. He who can see any other object of love and devotion comparable with the one to whom he gives himself in covenant-union, is thereby incapacitated from a covenant-union. Therefore it is that this first word of the Ten Words of the covenant of God's people with their God is not an arbitrary mandate, but is the simple expression of a truth which is essential to the very existence of the covenant as a covenant of union.

And this principle is as vitally important now as it was in the days of Moses. The human heart is always inclined to divide itself when it ought to be undivided. It is reluctant to be wholly and always true to God alone. But, now as hitherto, without wholeness of heart a covenant of union with God is an impossibility. And, indeed, the very idea of other gods is an outgrowth of man's sense of an unfitness to be in oneness of life with the One God,--in consequence of which man seeks a lower divinity than the supreme God as the immediate object of his worship.

The second requirement in this covenant of union is, that no material image or representation of this covenanting God shall be made use of as a help to his worship by his covenanting people; that, as a Spirit, God shall be worshiped in spirit by his people. Here, again, is no arbitrary mandate, but only the recognition of a vital truth. Because God is Creator of all, no creation of God can be like God. Because God is a Spirit, the human mind can best commune with him spiritually, without having its conceptions of him degraded by any image or representation--which at the best must be wholly unworthy of him.

In this second requirement, as in the first, a danger is indicated to which the Israelites were peculiarly exposed in their day, and to which all the people of God are exposed in any day. In the Assyrian, or Chaldean, home of Abraham, there was practically no image worship, but there was a belief in a plurality of gods. In the Egyptian home, from which the Israelites had just come out, images in great variety were the objects of worship. As the covenant people of God, the Israelites were to refrain from the polytheism of their ancestral home in the far East, and from the grosser idolatry of their more recent home in the West. And so it must be with the people of God at all times; they must worship only God, and they must worship God without any help from a material representation of the object of their worship.

As there is still a temptation to give a divided heart to God, so there is still a temptation to seek the help of some visible representation or symbol of God's presence in his worship. The Christian believer does not bow down to an idol, but many a Christian believer thinks that his mind can be helped upward in worship by looking at some representation of his Saviour's face, or at some symbol of his Saviour's passion. But just because God is infinitely above all material representations and symbols, so God can best be apprehended and discerned spiritually. Anything coming between man's spirit and God the Spirit is a hindrance to worship, and not a help to it. Suppose a young man were watching from a window for his absent mother's return, with a wish to catch the first glimpse of her approaching face. Would he be wise, or foolish, in putting up a photograph of his mother on the window-pane before him, as a help to bearing her in mind as he looks for her coming? As there can be no doubt about the answer to that question, so there can be no doubt that we can best come into spiritual communion with God by closing our eyes to everything that can be seen with the natural eye, and opening the eyes of our spirit to the sight of God the Spirit. This, again, is no arbitrary requirement of God; it is in the very nature of his being and of our own.

The third requirement of this compact is, that there shall be no insincerity on the part of God's covenant people in their claiming and bearing his name, as the name of their covenanting God. This requirement is not generally understood in this light; but all the facts in the case go to show that this is its true light. In the Oriental world, and in the primitive world everywhere, one's name stands for one's personality; and the right to bear one's name or even to call on one by his personal name, is a proof of intimate relation, if not of actual union, with him. God was now covenanting with this people to be his people, thereby authorizing them to bear his name, and to be known as his representatives. In the very nature of things, this laid upon them a peculiar obligation to bear his name reverently and in all sincerity.