Sacrifices (12): The Minchah, or Meat Offering, Concluded

A Savory Dish

Nearly every commentator on the meat offering has seriously mangled its proper interpretation. Because of this, I have found it necessary to digress from my original intent to consider the five Levitical sacrifices strictly within the locus of Christology in order to sojourn for a time within the realm of ecclesiology. Indeed, we have learned thus far about the meat offering that it typified the church of Jesus Christ. As a single, unleavened, and perfumed lump of oily dough, that bloodless offering from the grain harvest represented God’s minchah, or God’s gift to himself in Jesus Christ, his Son. The offering typified the earth’s yield of a peculiar people who are chosen unto eternal life and gathered by God’s irresistible call to show forth his praises forever. And every detail of the meat offering—the fine flour and oil, the frankincense, and the prohibition of any leaven—showcases the infinite wisdom and grace of God that prepared this gift from before the foundation of the world.

Now, there is one significant element of the meat offering that requires explanation before I can conclude its treatment and move along to the peace, sin, and trespass offerings. That element is the mysterious requirement that “every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt” (Lev. 2:13).

In this text the law makes clear by its peculiar rhetoric that we should take great interest in that salting of the meat offering. First, the law insists that “every” meat offering must be seasoned with salt, so that a saltless meat offering would not be valid before God. Second, the law uses repetition in this text, so that it is impossible to overlook the requirement of salt. Third, the law uses a double negative for even more emphasis: Neither shall you suffer the salt of God’s covenant to be lacking on your meat offering. It was as if God were saying, “The very thought that a meat offering would be missing salt must be abhorrent to you!”

But if these three things were not enough to pique our interest, specifically in the law for the meat offering is placed a general requirement that every kind of sacrifice be seasoned with salt. The requirement of the law was this: “With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.” This requirement comprehended not only every meat offering but every bloody offering as well. That “all thine offerings” also included bloody offerings is made clear in Ezekiel 43:24: “Thou shalt offer them [young bullocks] before the Lord, and the priests shall cast salt upon them, and they shall offer them up for a burnt offering unto the Lord.”¹ Salt is yet another symbol that was never absent from the altar of burnt offering. But since God places this general requirement for salt—a requirement that could have been mentioned in any one of the laws for the other Levitical sacrifices—specifically in the law for the meat offering, it is as if God exclaimed, “Do not think for a moment that this meat offering, though very different from the four bloody sacrifices, should be excluded from receiving the salt of my covenant!”

So, what was the word of God to his people when the priest took a handful of those white, savory crystals and sprinkled them all over the minchah that burned upon the altar? What Israel received by faith was this divine declaration: “This is delicious! This gift is not something that I desire to spew out of my mouth, but it is pleasant and delightful to me!”

And to understand why God intended the sprinkling of salt to testify of his pleasure and delight in the offerings upon his altar, we must take note of two presuppositions. First, salt is used in scripture as a symbol of something that is savory to God. Salt is not merely a seasoning that transforms bland food into something palatable, but salt is an earthly pattern of what eternally pleases and delights God in heaven. Second, the usage of salt in the meat offering had a different purpose than the usage of grain, oil, and frankincense. Whereas the latter materials must be reckoned as ingredients that symbolize how God eternally prepared his minchah, salt must be interpreted as God’s testimony concerning the offering.

Salt: A Seasoning, Not a Preservative

My first presupposition that salt in scripture symbolizes something savory and delightful to taste differs from the nearly unanimous consensus among scholars that salt symbolizes permanence. What scholars have said is this: Because “salt was the preservative par excellence in antiquity,”² and because “salt, through its pungent and purifying power, warded off all putrefaction from the food, and ensured its lasting,”³ therefore “salt is the symbol of continuance.”⁴

What I have observed is that when one presumes that salt in scripture symbolizes permanence, then the same one usually interprets this seasoning of the meat offering as a picture of the perseverance of the saints. Such a one might not use the term perseverance of the saints in his explanation of this seasoning, but his description of “the salt of the covenant of thy God” being applied to the meat offering certainly aligns with this doctrine.

For example, J. H. Kurtz wrote that when the meat offering was seasoned with the salt of God’s covenant, the offering was

thereby stamped as a divine power proceeding from the covenant of God with Israel, and co-operating in the preparation of the food, so as to render it a meat that does not perish, but endureth unto everlasting life.⁵

F. Keil wrote that this salt was

designated as the salt of the covenant of God, because of its imparting strength and purity to the sacrifice, by which Israel was strengthened and fortified in covenant fellowship with Jehovah.⁶

And W. S. Moule wrote that as this salt seasoned the meat offering, so

in all our service for [God] we are to “season” our labours with the recollection that it is his abiding presence which will subdue inward corruption and maintain continuance.⁷

Alternatively, some scholars have interpreted this seasoning of the meat offering with the “salt of the covenant of thy God” as a picture of covenant fidelity.

For example, J. Milgrom made the following observations:

A neo-Babylonian letter speaks of “all who tasted the salt of the Jakin tribe,” referring to the tribe’s covenantal allies. Loyalty to the Persian monarch is described as having tasted “the salt of the palace” (Ezra 4:14)…“There is salt between us” implies among Arab bedouin a treaty stipulating mutual aid and defense.⁸

My only interest in this quote from Milgrom is that he referenced Ezra 4:14. In Ezra 4 scripture records a letter that was sent to Ahasuerus by the adversaries of God’s people for the purpose of frustrating the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. These adversaries notified the king of Persia as to what was taking place in Jerusalem because, as the King James Version reads, “we have maintenance from the king’s palace, and it was not meet for us to see the king’s dishonor.” The literal reading of the Hebrew is this: “We eat salt from the palace,” so that what these adversaries were saying was, “Since we have an enduring bond of loyalty to you, O king, our allegiance demands that we notify you that this rebuilding of the temple will not bode well for your honor.”

Even though Ezra 4:14 bears record that people in the ancient Near East used the figure of salt to speak about bonds of loyalty between men, the only thing that this text shows—together with Milgrom’s other references from antiquity—is how pagan nations spoke of salt in their earthly affairs. By no means does this text prove that God ever intended salt to represent the idea of covenant fidelity. Certainly, people dwelling in regions that lacked refrigeration may have recognized that salt’s utility to preserve food from putrefaction could be employed as a useful concept to convey different ideas. The issue is, however, what does God have to say about salt in his holy and divine word?

Scripture does not use salt to speak of permanence. Scripture does not use salt to speak of fidelity in relationships. Rather, in scripture salt refers to good taste. Job 6:6 reads: “Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?” Salt refers to good taste because salt is that marvelous work of God’s hand in his creation, whereby he joins explosive sodium with toxic chlorine gas to form a savory table seasoning. Salt refers to good taste because what operates on a pinch of salt is the almighty word of God to make something a palatable delight. Something in scripture that is salted represents a pleasing, delightful taste.

That we must understand salt to be the symbol of savoriness is also clear from the New Testament, when the Lord says to his poor, mourning, meek, hungering, merciful, pure, peace-making, and persecuted disciples, “Ye are the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13).

What the Lord says in this text becomes the stumbling block that breaks the necks of those who stubbornly interpret salt as the symbol of permanence. Representative of this position is Milgrom, who, having asserted that “salt was the preservative par excellence in antiquity,” went on to write, 

A figurative extension of its preservative properties is the reference to the apostles as “the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13), in other words, teachers who guard against moral decay.⁹

 According to Milgrom, the Lord told his people to exercise the same sanitary, healthful, purifying, and preserving influence that salt possesses but in a moral sense and upon society. But this comment raises the question, with respect to whom is the church of Jesus Christ to exercise such a preserving influence? The world is dead, corrupt, and rotten to the core of its spiritual existence. One does not try to cure already putrefied meat! Salt may preserve, but salt does not have the power to restore. Certainly, Christ is not teaching that the church can have any positive influence upon that which is dead.

Instead, the Lord himself makes clear what he has in mind when he speaks of salt in his sermon. He does not go on to say, “But if the salt have lost his preserving power.” Rather Jesus says, “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” (Matt. 5:13). The Lord here speaks of salt as that which is savory.

Thus, according to the witness of the rest of scripture, the salt of the meat offering must symbolize something savory and delightful to taste.

Salt: A Testimony, Not a Quality

My second presupposition is that God was giving his people a testimony when he had the priests sprinkle the salt of his covenant upon the meat offering.

God did not intend to use salt as another ingredient in the meat offering to represent the ethical character of his minchah, which is how G. M. Ophoff interpreted it:

It is especially the New Testament Bible that enables one to accurately ascertain the symbolic significance of salt. There are utterances of Christ to which regard must be had. “Ye are the salt of the earth… (Matt. 5:13). Salt is good, but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith shall ye season it? Have salt among yourselves and have peace with one another (Matt. 9:50). Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man (Col. 4:6). In these passages salt is the emblem of: 1) the believers again in their corporate capacity (ye are the salt of the earth); 2) a conscious and thus flowering spiritual life (have salt in yourselves); 3) that spiritual wholesomeness of which the fear of the Lord, the life of regeneration, is the principle, and that renders the speech of the believer agreeable to the palate of God and of believing men…Believers are to see to it that, through their being transformed by the renewing of their mind, they retain their savor. For only when they have salt in themselves, do they walk as children of the light in the midst of the world, fight the good fight of faith, witness for the truth, and confess His name.¹⁰

Ophoff interpreted the savory symbol of salt as the savory new life of the regenerated believer. As plausible as this interpretation may be, it did not reckon with the fact that salt was applied to every kind of offering, whether bloody or bloodless. Because God said “with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt,” salt must have a consistent interpretation in connection with every offering. But if salt represented the savory new life of the regenerated believer in connection with the meat offering, it cannot retain this meaning if considered in connection with the bloody offerings that typified the one offering of Jesus Christ that “hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).

Furthermore, Ophoff did not venture to explain why God called this salt the “salt of the covenant of thy God.” There are only two other texts in the Old Testament that speak of this salt of God’s covenant: Numbers 18:19 and 2 Chronicles 13:5. These two texts are also frequently cited by those scholars who insist that salt symbolizes permanence as incontrovertible proof of the same. But what do these texts actually teach?

Numbers 18:19 reads as follows:

All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the Lord, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee.

Here God decreed that Aaron and his sons should receive the heave offerings—those holy gifts from the children of Israel that are enumerated in the preceding verses—for the support of the priests’ ministry in the temple. And it is supposed by most scholars that when God said “it is a covenant of salt” that he made this decree concerning heave offerings a permanent ordinance in Israel. Thus when God said “it is a covenant of salt,” he was merely elaborating as to why this decree was a “statute for ever.” However, not only is this interpretation rooted in that false conception that God’s covenant is essentially a conditional pact or agreement (rather than an unconditional relationship of friendship with his people in Jesus Christ), but this interpretation also forces an awkward—even irrational—redundancy into the text. For if we are to understand “a covenant of salt” as a permanent ordinance, then this is how we should read the text: “All the heave offerings…have I given thee…by a statute for ever: it is [an ordinance for ever] for ever before the Lord.” If “a covenant of salt” must already be understood as a permanent ordinance, then there would be no need to add “for ever” in the last clause of the text.

But this problem altogether disappears if salt represents something pleasing and delightful to the taste. Salt stands for that which pleases God. Since God’s being is immutable and his desires never change, salt stands for that which eternally pleases God. And what pleases and delights God is his covenant. That covenant, being rooted in God’s eternal good pleasure, is savory to him. The covenant is all that he cares about in all creation. The covenant is the only thing that God cares about, for he is in himself the covenant God, and his eternal good pleasure was to reveal his covenant by establishing a covenant of grace with his people in Jesus Christ. God made salt what it is in order to serve as a useful symbol in connection with his covenant.

And in Numbers 18:19 God was saying this to Aaron and his sons: “You who are the visible representatives of my covenant and who serve me in behalf of my covenant, it is very pleasing and delightful to my palate that you should receive these heave offerings. When you receive as a heave offering the best of Israel’s oil and wine and wheat and whatsoever is first ripe in the land, the pleasure and delight are not simply restricted to you. No, the pleasure and delight are first of all mine! Although you will not own land like the other tribes, you have something better: I will sustain you with the savory provisions of my covenant.” And do not forget that God said this to Aaron in the presence of all Israel who just had witnessed God’s staggering overthrow of that terrible rebellion by Korah against Aaron’s priesthood. And after God had proved against rebellious Israel that the priesthood of his covenant belonged to Aaron by causing Aaron’s rod to bud, the people responded by saying to Moses: “Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish. Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die: shall we be consumed with dying?” (Num. 17:12–13). Thus in Numbers 18 God reminded his people that the priesthood was responsible in behalf of God’s covenant to take away their iniquity before God’s holy presence and that their support of this priestly ministry by their heave offerings should be as savory to them as it was to God.

The second text in scripture that refers to a covenant of salt should be understood in the same manner. Second Chronicles 13:5 reads as follows: 

Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt? 

These are the words that Abijah shouted down from Mount Zemaraim to Jeroboam and his army before that great battle between Judah and Israel. Once again, it is supposed by most scholars that the words “covenant of salt” emphasize the permanence of the rule of David’s seed. However, we must begin by noting in this text that the word “by” in “by a covenant of salt” is absent from the Hebrew. The Hebrew makes the “covenant of salt” stand in apposition to David’s everlasting kingdom and not the means by which that kingdom is established. In other words, this text identifies God’s covenant of salt with David’s everlasting kingdom. When God gave to David his kingdom, God was unfolding more of the great mystery of his eternal counsel that his covenantal relationship with his elect people in Jesus Christ takes the form of a kingdom. Furthermore, what scripture is saying here is how much that kingdom pleased and delighted God. David’s kingdom, David’s kingship, David himself, and the elect citizens of David’s kingdom were the only things on the earth that were palatable to God. Everything else in the world he desired to spew out of his mouth. And God proved these words of Abijah against Israel when God went out before the children of Judah and smote the hosts of Israel with a great slaughter.

In conclusion, the “salt of the covenant of thy God” that seasoned the offerings upon God’s altar was God’s declaration that those bloody and bloodless offerings and, by extension, those feast days of the law wherein Israel presented these offerings to God were a delight to him. As joyful as those feast days may have been to Israel, whom God by his own free and sovereign good pleasure had summoned to stand in his courts and feast on savory food in his presence, the pleasure was not only Israel’s. The pleasure of those days was first of all God’s. With that salt of his covenant, God was saying to his church, “This is delicious and palatable. This delights me. This eternally pleases me.”

Pleased with What?

But what was it exactly that pleased God and delighted his holy palate?

You might remember from the previous article that behind the offering of every meat offering stood a spiritual confession.¹¹ For example, as the Israelite presented that fine flour mingled with oil, he confessed himself to be a puny and insignificant grain that God had bound together with thousands upon thousands of other grains by the unity of the Spirit to form a single loaf, and that the Israelite’s purpose as a member of Christ’s church was not to serve himself but to spend himself—his time and resources and abilities and strength—for the sake of that church. Or as the Israelite presented that unleavened lump, he confessed that God’s minchah had no fellowship with unrighteousness or darkness or Belial or an infidel and that he must detest and separate himself from all iniquity and transgression and sin lest the name of God be profaned. Or as the Israelite presented a fragrant lump that had been scented with frankincense, he confessed that his entire life was a prayer-life, so that he had to conduct himself as one who continually and consciously and eagerly drank from God’s fountain of life and drew all things necessary for body and soul to present himself “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Rom. 12:1).

And when that Israelite examined himself in light of that spiritual confession about the meat offering—when he examined his ways and thoughts and plans and purposes and deeds; when he examined his work and his play, his lying down and rising up, his going out and coming in; when he examined his walk in the home, in the church, and in the world—what was it that he discovered about himself? That he was a decent person? That he was greatly advanced in a sanctified life? That he had mastered all major sins and only had to work on a few minor sins? When that Israelite ascended into the hill of Jehovah and stood in his holy place, did that Israelite declare that he had clean hands and a pure heart? Did he say, “I have not lifted up my soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully”? Did he say to himself, “I have loved my neighbor really well, and I have loved the church really well, and I am doing pretty good in my life”? Did he think to himself, “My life surely will be savory to that perfectly discriminating palate of the holy God, so when he rolls my life around in his pure mouth to discern its taste he will be filled with delight and say, ‘This pleases me!’”?

Or did that Israelite in his self-examination discover a loathsome and abhorrent sinner? Did he find a rotten sinner whose ways, thoughts, plans, purposes, and deeds bore the putrid aroma and taste of death? Did he find his own hands to be unclean with the evil that he had done? What about the desperate wickedness of his heart by nature and the depravity that always cleaved to him? What about all the searching out of vanity with his mind and will and the wretched lies upon his lips? Did he come to the conclusion, “I have no right to be here”?

When the Israelite entered God’s house with his meat offering and the priest seasoned the Israelite’s meat offering with salt, thereby testifying, “God is pleased that you are here. It is delicious and savory to him that you are here in his house,” was that declaration made on account of anything in that Israelite?

No.

That declaration belonged to the elect Israelite because of what he had by faith in God’s promise of Christ. That declaration “This pleases me!” is what was heard at the dawn of the New Testament beside the bank of the Jordan River and heard also on the top of the mount of transfiguration when a voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” Salt is what pleases God eternally, and that is Jesus Christ. Salt is Christ as the very heart and center of the good pleasure of God, as that one in whom God reveals his covenant life and as that one in whom God works the salvation of his people and the just destruction of the reprobate. God’s declaration by this salt of his covenant was a declaration of what one has by faith alone in Jesus Christ.

God’s declaration by this salt of his covenant is the declaration that comes today too in the weekly assembly of God’s church, when by the preaching of the gospel, God testifies to his elect sinners that though their sins rise up against them, he finds them savory and delightful for the sake of their head and savior Jesus Christ, in whom is the remission of all their sins.

Salt: Something Accursed

It is very striking that salt in scripture represents what tastes good and what eternally delights God because salt in scripture also represents destruction and barrenness under God’s curse.

Salt is what kings would sow upon the land of their enemies to make that land desolate and unfruitful. Salt is what a vengeful Abimelech sowed against the men of Shechem to make their city a perpetual ruin. So too, when the King of heaven and earth issues forth his curse from his royal judgment seat, he makes the accursed to “inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited” (Jer. 17:6). God’s justice demands that his enemies become like Sodom and Gomorrah, “even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation” (Zeph. 2:9), and that the land of covenant-breakers become “brimstone, and salt, and burning, that is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein” (Deut. 29:23). Or remember that pillar of salt that God cast down in the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, turning Lot’s wife into part of the cursed landscape.

The Lord himself speaks of salt this way in Mark 9. Having just spoken about those who must cut off their offending hands and feet and cut out their offending eyes, lest they be cast into hell where the worm dies not and where the fire is not quenched, the Lord adds this: “For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt” (v. 49). And what the Lord is saying is that all men in Adam must perish under God’s curse, for when man rebelled, God spoke over the whole human race a curse to make man desolate and barren and altogether unfruitful. All must be salted with fire.

Why is Christ salt? Because he became a curse in the stead of God’s people. God brought his Son to the cross, and God salted his Son with fire. God brought upon his Son wrath. On the cross Christ was made desolate and barren, body and soul: “My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death” (Ps. 22:15). And God tasted that sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the altar of Calvary as Christ bore all the sins of his people—all their God-hating and neighbor-hating ways—and God said, “This is tasty to me. This satisfies my justice and glorifies my name. This saves my church. This fulfills my counsel and good pleasure concerning my covenant. This is how I purchase for myself my minchah.” And by his vicarious satisfaction, Christ manifested himself to be the true salt of God’s covenant. His blood sealed that savory covenant of God.

What is that deep connection in this symbol of salt as that which pleases God eternally and that which God curses to destroy? That deep connection is the cross of Jesus Christ.

Thus you can now understand why the law did not permit the meat offering to be an independent offering.¹² Why could the meat offering come to the altar only after a burnt offering had been given? Because there was destruction that was needed. There was that which must be salted with fire and destroyed. Fundamental to that spiritual confession of the meat offering was this: I stand here as God’s minchah on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.

As appalling as it should have been for the Israelites of the church of the old dispensation to suffer the salt of God’s covenant to be lacking upon their offerings, so appalling should it be for the church of the new dispensation that the salt of God’s covenant be lacking from the pulpit today. The law and prophets speak yet today and say, “Do not suffer that salt to be lacking! Do not even think about coming to worship if that salt of the covenant of God is missing from your preaching, if God’s strict justice against sin is not faithfully expounded, and if the truth about how God finds his people savory is turned into a lie. That must be disgusting and abhorrent to you!”

When you come to church and say, “I have no right in myself to be here. I deserve to be spewed out of God’s mouth and accursed,” then God by his gospel sprinkles that salting of Jesus Christ upon the cross before your eyes and declares, “My Son has taken  upon himself the curse due to my people, that I might fill them with my blessings. That is savory to me. That is delightful to me. I cannot be any more pleased than I am pleased with him. In him I find all your worship savory and delicious.”

Wine: Heavenly Joy

That is why God also said in connection with the offering of the meat offering, “Let there be wine too!” Every meat offering had its attendant drink offering of wine.

Not water. Water is the drink of a man toiling in sorrow. Water is the drink of a man who sweats and labors in a field.

But when God’s true minchah was assembled in his presence for worship, God said, “Let them drink the fruit of the vine that has undergone fermentation, that which has undergone a radical transformation.” For by the blood of Jesus Christ, God transforms the toil and sorrow of this death-life in the valley of tears into joyful communion of everlasting life in heaven. “Let there be wine,” God said, “for that is the joyful life that I minister to my people by means of my gospel. I take their wearisome, mundane, and miserable earthly existences, and in my Son I transform the earthly into the heavenly joys of heaven. Let there be gladness, for that is the new life that my minchah possesses.”

What an offering! And that meat offering was just a shadow-picture of the fulfillment that is found today in the assembly of God’s church and of what will become manifest shortly when Christ returns to gather God’s full harvest and present it unto God in the new Jerusalem.