Matthew 5:13,14

ἄλας, a late form for ἄλς, ἄλος, masculine. The properties of salt are assumed to be known. Commentators have enumerated four. Salt is pure, preserves against corruption. gives flavour to food, and as a manuring element helps to fertilise the land. The last mentioned property is specially insisted on by Schanz, who finds a reference to it in Luke 14:35, and thinks it is also pointed to here by the expression τῆς γῆς. The first, purity, is a quality of salt per se, rather than a condition on which its function in nature depends. The second and third are doubtless the main points to be insisted on, and the second more than the third and above all. Salt arrests or prevents the process of putrefaction in food, and the citizens of the kingdom perform the same function for the earth, that is, for the people who dwell on it. In Schanz's view there is a confusion of the metaphor with its moral interpretation. Fritzsche limits the point of comparison to indispensableness = ye are as necessary an element in the world as salt is; a needlessly bald interpretation. Necessary certainly, but why and for what? τῆς γῆς might mean the land of Israel (Achelis, Bergpredigt), but it is more natural to take it in its widest significance in harmony with κόσμου. Holtzmann (H. C.) sets κόσμου down to the account of the evangelist, and thinks γῆς in the narrow sense more suited to the views of Jesus.