What Does Leviticus 2:13 Mean?
And every drawing near of your gift you season with salt; you do not cause the salt of the covenant of your God to cease from your gift. On all your drawing near you bring salt near.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And 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.THE KEY
The salt itself is brought near with every offering, making covenant tangible in the act of approach.
THE MEANING
Your approach to God is pictured as carrying covenant in its very substance: salt belongs with every offering. The verse names salt both as the covenant’s salt and as something brought near, binding relationship to what is presented.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that covenant is only an invisible promise with no place in what is brought near: here its salt is present with every offering.
THE ROOT
מֶלַח
melaḥ
GROWS FROM
מלח
m-l-ḥ
Salt; as a verb, to salt.
“season with salt” in this verse is melaḥ. The verse repeats מלח in מֶלַח (melach, salt), תִּמְלָח (timlaḥ, you shall salt), and מֶלַח (melach, salt). The covenant’s salt is not left as an abstraction: it is the substance used in every offering.
ALSO GROWS
timlaḥ: You shall salt
תִּמְלָח
The command repeats the salt-word as an action, joining the substance to what is done with it.
Yam ha-Melaḥ: Salt Sea
יַם הַמֶּלַח
The same salt-word names a sea, keeping melach grounded in a tangible substance as it marks the covenant here.
קָרְבָּן
qorbān
GROWS FROM
קרב
q-r-b
To approach, come near.
The offering is a qorbān, from the root of drawing near. At the end of the verse, תַּקְרִיב (taqriv) says to bring salt near with every offering, placing salt inside the act of approach.
ALSO GROWS
qārōv: Near, close
קָרוֹב
This branch makes the nearness carried by qorbān audible in the word itself.
taqriv: You shall bring near; offer
תַּקְרִיב
The closing command uses this root for bringing salt near with every offering.
THE PATTERN
Salt marks covenant continuity in worship and becomes an image for the quality that sustains shared life.
All the lifted offerings of the set-apart things, which the children of Israel bring near to the LORD, I have given to you, and to your sons and your daughters with you, by an engraved statute for the ages. It is a covenant of salt for the ages before the LORD, to you and to your seed with you.Should you not perceive that the LORD God of Israel gave the governance over Israel to David for the ages, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have wholeness with one another.THE THREAD
And when a living soul brings near a gift to the LORD, his drawing near is of fine flour; he pours oil upon it and sets frankincense upon it.The word for offering here, qorbān, belongs to the root קרב (q-r-b), to approach or come near. Leviticus 2:1 uses that same root in “offer”; this verse extends the approach by saying to bring salt near with every offering.
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