The Covenant of Salt / As Based on the Significance and Symbolism of Salt in Primitive Thought

by H. Clay Trumbull

This, again, is not an arbitrary commandment; nor is it one for a single period, or for a single people only. It is the enunciation of a principle which is vital to the well-being of all peoples at all times. It was so from the beginning, and it must be so unto the end. The family is the unit in the State and in the Church. It must not be ignored in the realm of society, of government, or of religion. He who would be true to God must be true to the institution of the family. And who shall say that we have no need of remembering this truth in our land and day?

The eighth requirement of the covenant guards the rights of property as within the plan and ordering of God. "Thou shalt not steal" is announced as an article of the loving compact of God's people with their God. Not merely because your fellow-man would object to your taking his property from him, but because the rights of property are of divine appointment, are you to refrain from claiming as your own that which now belongs to another.

This idea of regarding property rights as of God's appointment is peculiarly prevalent in the Oriental mind. The lines of tribal division in the desert are recognized as having divine sanction; and now, as in the days of old, it is hardly less than sacrilege to remove an ancient landmark in the East. Tribes which are at enmity will make raids across these border lines for purposes of plunder; but this is in the nature of what "civilized" nations call a "military necessity." Again, a stranger who enters a tribal domain without obtaining consent is treated as a smuggler, and all his property is confiscated accordingly. This, however, merely shows the primitive origin of the "high tariff" principle. Orientals who plunder from their enemies, or who collect impost duties from immigrants, do so in the belief that God sanctions these habits of the ages.

When one of the Arabs of our party, in crossing the desert of Sinai, found he had dropped a bag of meal, he went back to look for it, in perfect confidence that it would be left untouched by others. On my asking him if he had no fear that another Arab had carried it off, he replied that no Arab would steal from an Arab. Dr. Edward Robinson[281] saw a black tent hanging on a tree, where, as he was told, it had remained a full year awaiting its owner's return; and he says that if a loaded camel dies on the desert its owner draws a circle in the sand about it, and leaves it without any fear that it will be disturbed in his absence. Burckhardt[282] illustrates the estimate put by the Arabs on stealing, by the story of an Arab father who bound his own son hand and foot, and cast him headlong to death from a precipice, because the son had stolen from one of his tribal fellows. Life can only be taken at the call of God; but, according to this Oriental view, he who violates the property rights of one of God's children forfeits his very life to God.

The principle underlying this estimate of the sacredness of property rights, like every other principle enunciated in the Decalogue, is not an outgrowth of an arbitrary commandment, but it inheres in the very nature of God's dealings with the sons of men. What hast thou that thou didst not receive by God's consent?[283] What has thy fellow that he did not receive by the same permission? It is God who gives. It is for God to take away.[284] No loving child of God will refuse to heed the limits which his Father has assigned in the distribution of his possessions among the children of his love. That was the way in which the Orientals were taught to look at it. That is the way in which we ought to view it. Anti-property communism is rebellion against God.

Ninth in the list of the covenant requirements comes the summons to hold in sacred regard the personal reputation, or good name, of every child of God. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" is a prohibition of slander, or of careless speech affecting the good name of one's fellow-man. This is not, as many have supposed, a mere injunction to truthful speech on all occasions. Lying needs no specific prohibition in a loving compact between God and his people; although the duty of truthfulness is inseparable from the thought of any compact with God—who could not be God if he were to approve untruthfulness.[285] But a disregard by man of the reputation of his fellow-man does need to be guarded against in such a compact; therefore its mention has a place here. A child's good name is always dear to his father. He who loves and honors the father will not be heedless of the reputation of the child. God is the Father of all. The good name of every one of his children is dear to him. He who loves and honors God will not be careless of the reputation of any one of God's dear children. Therefore it is that, in the loving covenant of God with his people, it is declared that love for God includes a truthful fidelity to the good name of every child of God.

How the application of this principle comes home to us in our social life as God's children! We are jealous of the good name of the members of our own families. We are tender of the reputation of those whom we know to be very dear to our dearest friends. But how careless we are of the good name of those in whom we feel no special concern, or of the reputation of those who happen to be personally disagreeable to us! We hear and repeat the words spoken to their discredit without knowing whether or not those words are true. By our unguarded speech or looks we help, perhaps, to give a false impression to others concerning them. And all the while they are God's dear children, and every spiteful or thoughtless blow at them is a stroke at him. Is this consistent with our claim of loving union with their God and ours?

It was in the line of this principle that our Lord Jesus gave emphasis to his one new commandment, that those who loved him should love one another, as being dear to him;[286] and, again, that he declared that whoever ministered tenderly to one of his disciples should be reckoned as ministering to himself.[287] God links himself in loving sympathy with all his children, and he wants their welfare to be held dear by all who hold him dear.

And now we come to the tenth and last of the requirements of this covenant. Here we find an injunction that goes deeper than those which precede it on the second tablet of the written compact. "Thou shalt not covet." Not only, Thou shalt not openly disregard human life, or the family institution, or the property or the reputation of any one of thy fellows; but, Thou shalt not want to do any of these things. Thou shalt recognize thine own lot, and thy possessions, and the lot and the possessions of others, as God's assignment to thee and to them; and thou shalt be contented within the sphere which he has deemed best for thee.

This requirement in the second table of the compact corresponds with the third requirement in the first table. The one says that the child of God must be sincere and unfeigned in his loving devotedness to God as his Father; the other says that the child of God must accept in all heartiness his Father's ordering concerning himself, in his relations to all his brothers and sisters in the great family of God.