מֶ֫לַח
me.lach (H4417M)
salt
AI Word Study
The Hebrew word "me.lach" (Strong's H4417M) consistently refers to a crucial component in cooking: salt. Its 14 occurrences in the Bible demonstrate its importance in everyday life, specifically in the culinary context. Salt is a seasoning, preserving agent, and flavor enhancer, which is essential for making food palatable and edible. Besides its practical uses, salt also carries symbolic meaning. Salt is a trade commodity, indicating its value as a precious resource. The scarcity and high demand for salt would have made it a valuable item in ancient economies, underscoring its significance beyond its culinary purposes. The use of salt in biblical contexts ranges from ordinary domestic activities, such as seasoning food (Mark 9:45, 47), to more ritualistic practices, such as covenant renewal ( Numbers 18:19, 2 Chronicles 13:5). The consistent association of salt with everyday life highlights its utility and widespread importance.
AI synthesis uses only provided lexicon data -- never training knowledge.
But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
Every offering of your meal offering you shall season with salt. You shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your meal offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.
All the wave offerings of the holy things which the children of Israel offer to Yahweh, I have given you and your sons and your daughters with you, as a portion forever. It is a covenant of salt forever before Yahweh to you and to your offspring with you.”
that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath.
Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city and killed the people in it. He beat down the city and sowed it with salt.
He said, “Bring me a new jar, and put salt in it.” Then they brought it to him.
He went out to the spring of the waters, and threw salt into it, and said, “Yahweh says, ‘I have healed these waters. There shall not be from there any more death or barren wasteland.’ ”
Ought you not to know that Yahweh, the God of Israel, gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?
Can that which has no flavor be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
You shall bring them near to Yahweh, and the priests shall cast salt on them, and they shall offer them up for a burnt offering to Yahweh.
But the miry places of it, and its marshes, will not be healed. They will be given up to salt.
Therefore as I live, says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, surely Moab will be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, a possession of nettles, and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation. The remnant of my people will plunder them, and the survivors of my nation will inherit them.