Leviticus 2:13-16

Lev 2:13 And every sacrifice of your food offering shall you season with salt. And you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your food offering. You shall offer salt with all your offerings.

The meaning which the salt, with its power to strengthen food and preserve it from putrefaction and corruption, imparted to the sacrifice, was the unbending truthfulness of that self-surrender to the Lord embodied in the sacrifice, by which all impurity and hypocrisy were repelled. The salt of the sacrifice is called the salt of the covenant, because in common life salt was the symbol of covenant; treaties being concluded and rendered firm and inviolable, according to a well-known custom of the ancient Greeks, by the parties to an alliance eating bread and salt together, as a sign of the treaty which they had made. As a covenant of this kind was called a “covenant of salt,” equivalent to an indissoluble covenant Numbers 18:19 All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the sons of Israel offer to Jehovah, I have given you and your sons and your daughters with you, by a law forever. It is a covenant of salt forever before Jehovah to you and to your seed with you; 2Chronicles 13:5 Should you not know that Jehovah, the God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt? so here the salt added to the sacrifice is designated as 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 the Lord.

Consider how Christianity is the salt of the earth. Matthew 5:13 You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted? It is no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and to be trodden underfoot by men. Consider the covenant of salt in this. If we do not have a covenant with God, what good is our lives? Mark 9:49 For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Everyone of us is in covenant with God through the blood of Christ. Consider the additional concept of the covenant of salt in this verse. Colossians 4:6 Let your speech be always with grace, having been seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. We can talk with grace when our words are tempered by our covenant with the Lord, with His words.

It had a typical meaning referred to by our Lord concerning the effect of the Gospel on those who embrace it (Mar_9:49-50); as when plentifully applied it preserves meat from spoiling, so will the Gospel keep men from being corrupted by sin. And as salt was indispensable to render sacrifices acceptable to God, so the Gospel, brought home to the hearts of men by the Holy Ghost, is indispensably requisite to their offering up of themselves as living sacrifices.

Salt was the opposite to leaven, for it preserved from putrefaction and corruption, and signified the purity and persevering fidelity that were necessary in the worship of God. Every thing was seasoned with it, to signify the purity and perfection that should be extended through every part of the Divine service, and through the hearts and lives of God’s worshippers. It was called the salt of the covenant of God, because as salt is incorruptible, so was the covenant made with Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and the patriarchs, relative to the redemption of the world by the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ.

The salt for the sacrifice was not brought by the offerers, but was provided at the public charge, as the wood was, Ezr_7:20-22. And there was a chamber in the court of the temple called the chamber of salt, in which they laid it up. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? God would hereby intimate to them that their sacrifices in themselves were unsavoury. The saints, who are living sacrifices to God, must have salt in themselves, for every sacrifice must be salted with salt (Mar_9:49, Mar_9:50), and our speech must be always with grace (Col_4:6), so must all our religious performances be seasoned with that salt. Christianity is the salt of the earth. Our “sacrifices” are meaningless without Him covering us.

Lev 2:14 And if you bring a food offering of your firstfruits to Jehovah, green ears roasted by fire, grains of a garden, you shall bring near for a food offering your firstfruits,

a meat offering of thy first-fruits--From the mention of "green ears," this seems to have been a voluntary offering before the harvest--the ears being prepared in the favorite way of Eastern people, by parching them at the fire, and then beating them out for use. It was designed to be an early tribute of pious thankfulness for the earth's increase, and it was offered according to the usual directions.

The loaves of first-fruits were leavened and no part of them was burnt upon the altar (Lev_23:10-11; 17, 20). Every independent meat-offering was to be prepared without leaven, and a portion given to the Lord as fire-food, for a savour of satisfaction upon the altar; and the rest was to be scrupulously kept from being used by the offerer, as a most holy thing, and to be eaten at the holy place by the sanctified priests alone, as the servants of the Lord, and the mediators between Him and the nation. Interesting that as Jesus bore our leaven (sin) so do the priests here eat the leaven in the loaves given to them.

Lev 2:15 And you shall put oil on it and lay frankincense on it. It is a food offering.

Lev 2:16 And the priest shall burn it as incense with its memorial offering from its grains and from its oil, besides all its frankincense, a fire offering to Jehovah.

Now, as oil in the Scriptures is invariably a symbol of the Spirit of God, so bread-flour and bread, procured from the seed of the field, are symbols of the word of God Deuteronomy 8:3 "He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. Luke 8:11 And the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God. As God gives man corn and oil to feed and nourish his bodily life, so He gives His people His word and Spirit, that they may draw food from these for the spiritual life of the inner man. The work of sanctification consists in the operation of this spiritual food, through the right use of the means of grace for growth in pious conversation and good works (Mat_5:16; 1Pe_2:12). The enjoyment of this food fills the inner man with peace, joy, and blessedness in God. This fruit of the spiritual life is shadowed forth in the meat-offerings. They were to be kept free, therefore, both from the leaven of hypocrisy Luke 12:1 In the meantime, when there had gathered together an innumerable crowd of people, so as to trample on one another, He began to say to His disciples first, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy and of malice and wickedness 1Corinthians 5:8 Therefore let us keep the feast; not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Leaven and honey (representing carnal nature) are both destructive of spiritual life; while the salt of the covenant of God (i.e., the purifying, strengthening, and quickening power of the covenant, by which moral corruption was averted) and the incense of prayer were both to be added, in order that the fruits of the spiritual life might become well-pleasing to the Lord. It was upon this signification that the most holy character of the meat-offerings was founded.