The Sacredness of "Salt" ~Part Two~ Rites and Covenants

The Covenant of Salt

(By: Henry Clay Trumbull, 1899) 

Click the title link above for a very in depth and enlightening studying of primitive rituals and covenant rites of "Salt."

From the book: 

Among the varied forms of primitive covenanting, perhaps none is more widely known and honored, or less understood, the world over, than a covenant of Salt, or a salt covenant. It is evident that the true symbolism and sanctity of salt as the nexus of a covenant lie deeper than is admitted, or than has been formally stated by any scholar.

"Covenant" as an English word, simply means, according to its etymological significations, "a coming together." At times the word is used interchangeably with such words as, "an agreement, a league, a treaty, a compact, an arrangement, an obligation or a promise." Only by its context and connections are we shown in special cases that a covenant bond has peculiar or pre-eminent sacredness and perpetuity. This truth is, however shown in many an instance, especially in translation from earlier languages.

Even in our use of the  English word "covenant" we have to recognize, at times, its meaning as a sacred and indissoluble joining together of two parties covenanting, as distinct from any ordinary agreement or compact. And  when we go back, as in our English bible, to the Greek and Hebrew words rendered "covenant" or "testament" or "oath," in a sworn bond, we find this distinction more strongly emphasized. 

 The very idea of a "covenant" in primitive thought is a union of being, or of persons, in a common life, with the approval of God, or of the gods. This was primarily a sharing of blood, which is life, between two persons, through a rite which had the sanction of whom is the source of all life. In this sense "blood brotherhood" and the "threshold covenant" are but different forms of one and the same covenant. 

The blood of animals shared in common sacrifice is counted as the blood which makes two one in a sacred covenant. Wine as "the blood of the grape" stands for the blood which is the life of all flesh; hence the sharing of wine stands for the sharing of blood life. So, again, salt represents blood, or life, and the covenant of salt is simply another form of the one "blood covenant".