Leviticus 2:13

Summary

This verse instructs that every grain offering (minchah, H4503G) must be seasoned with salt, that the "salt of the covenant of your God" must never be missing from it, and that salt must accompany every offering (qorban, H7133A) that is presented.

Key words

• tim.Lach ("you will salt", H4414B) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular; a verb built directly from the noun "salt," expressing a future/durative obligation to season the offering.
• tash.Bit ("you must cause to cease", H7673A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect with the negation lo' ("not", H3808); the causative stem turns a simple "ceasing" into "you must not cause [it] to cease," i.e., a prohibition against removing something.
• be.Rit ("covenant of", H1285) — feminine singular construct, linking melach ("salt") to 'elohei-kha ("your God"), forming the fixed phrase "salt of the covenant of your God."
• tak.Riv ("you will present", H7126H) — hiphil imperfect from the same root as qorban ("offering"), creating a wordplay: the noun for "offering" and the verb "to present/bring near" share the root ק־ר־ב.
• khol / kol- ("every", H3605) — construct form repeated twice (with qorban), framing the command as applying to the totality of offerings, not a single instance.

What the text says

The verse is built from three parallel clauses, each governed by a form of the root ק־ר־ב ("to bring near/offering"): qorban minchatkha ("the offering of your grain offering"), minchatekha ("your grain offering"), and kol-qorbankha ("all your offering"), closed by the verb tak.Riv ("you will present") from the same root. This repetition creates a frame that begins and ends the verse with the vocabulary of "presenting," while the middle clause interrupts with a prohibition.

That middle clause uses the hiphil tash.Bit ("you must cause to cease") negated by lo', a causative construction that does not simply say "salt will not disappear" but "you must not be the cause of its absence" — placing the responsibility explicitly on the offerer. The object of this prohibition is melach berit 'elohekha, a construct chain literally "salt of covenant of your God," where berit (H1285) syntactically binds "salt" to "your God" as a fixed liturgical designation rather than a general reference to salt.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders melach berit 'elohekha ("salt of the covenant of your God") simply as hala kyriou ("salt of the Lord"), dropping the term "covenant" (berit) found in the Hebrew and the Vulgate's sal foederis Dei tui, which preserves the construct chain closely. Additionally, the LXX adds an explicit dative recipient, kyriō tō theō hymōn ("to the Lord your God"), in the final clause, where the Hebrew tak.Riv melach ("you will present salt") does not name an explicit addressee.