“Salt of the Earth”

Redaction: The Sermon on the Mount begins a new topic at this point, having finished the Beatitudes. Although it no longer uses the blessing form, there is conceptual continuity from the previous section.

The Beatitudes emphasized the blessed nature of the believer; these blessings were future, not current. The Beatitudes show people suffering current oppressions who can look forward to promised blessings in the world to come that will reverse their current status. Ironically, though these blessed-but-marginalized believers are looking toward a future blessing for themselves, they are the blessing of the world that currently reviles them.

The sermon is focusing away from the blessings of the believers and focusing on their responsibilities. A little salt seasons a lot of food and is essential for life. Although believers are few, their responsibility is to flavor the whole world. The second clause emphasizes believers’ personal responsibility. If they do not live the gospel, their mission to be salt will fail and they will not be worthy of the promised blessings.

Comparison: The bold type shows 3 Nephi additions to the King James Version of Matthew 5:13:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to beYe are the salt of the earth: but if the salt lose itshave lost his savour, wherewith shall the earthit be salted? The saltitshall beis thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

Each alteration follows the same pattern of clarify the meaning for a more modern audience by using more contemporary language. It either expands the reference (“I give unto you to be” rather than “Ye are,”) or uses future tense rather than the more convoluted (though correct) past perfect tense (“lose its” replaces “have lost his”). Other awkward remnants of Hebrew are also removed to make the English flow better, such as the insertion of “its” instead of “his” since the referent is “salt,” which would require the neutral pronoun in English.

These changes modernize the English from the King James text but do not alter the meaning at all. The only function of the changes is to make the meaning more accessible to an audience accustomed to a different style of English.

The “I give unto you” does add the idea that the requirement to be the salt of the earth is a commandment of the Lord. This might be implicit in the declaration of the imperative “ye are… ”; nevertheless, it highlights the Savior’s relationship to this statement in assigning this mission to believers. They are not the salt of the earth because they are naturally salty, which might be implied by the concept of salt losing its flavor. Even though they might not be what the world expects of salt, it is nevertheless their responsibility to be that salt.

In both Matthew and Luke (Luke 11:34), the phrase that is translated here as “good for nothing” is actually a word meaning “foolish.” Mark has the more contextually appropriate “saltless.” The probable explanation for this curious word in Greek is that the Greek translates an underlying Hebrew word. Guelich explains: “The Hebrew verb tpl has a double meaning, ‘to become unsavory,’ ‘insipid’ and a ‘fool.’” The Hebrew word had a dual meaning, and the closest translation was taken in Greek, but the translation did not carry the full semantic weight of the original Hebrew term.

An enigmatic phrase in this beatitude is the “of the earth.” Salt has no beneficial effect on earth and indeed can destroy fertility. It must therefore be read metaphorically. The “earth” in this case is not the soil, but the “world of men.”