Of course, there is no human bond which will guard human nature against all possible treachery. These references to the measure of fidelity among different peoples or tribes are an indication of the relative degree of faithfulness prevailing among them severally. Those who are faithless to salt cannot be depended on for anything. If a man would not be true to one who is of his own blood, of his own life, and to whom he is bound in a sacred covenant of which his God is a party, he could not be depended on in any emergency. The covenant of salt is all this in the thought of the primitive mind.
Don Raphel says, of the estimate of faithlessness to salt entertained by Arabs generally: "When they have eaten bread and salt with any one, it would be a horrid crime not only to rob him, but even to touch the smallest part of his baggage, or of the goods which he takes with him through the desert. The smallest injury done to his person would be considered as an equal wickedness. An Arab who should be guilty of such a crime would be looked upon as a wretch who might expect reproof and detestation from everybody. He would appear despicable to himself, and never be able to wash away his shame. It is almost unheard of for an Arab to bring such disgrace upon himself."[202]
[202] _The Bedouins or Arabs of the Desert_, Part II., p. 59; quoted in Burder's _Oriental Customs_, 2d ed., p. 72.
It was said by the ancient Jews that Sodom was destroyed because its inhabitants had been faithless to salt, in maltreating guests who had partaken of salt in their city. In a Talmudic comment on Lot's wife, the record is: "Rabbi Isaac asked, 'Why did she become a pillar of salt?' 'Because she had sinned through salt. For in the night in which the men came to Lot she went to her neighbors, and said to them, Give me salt, for we have guests. But her purpose was to make (the evil-minded) people of the city acquainted with the guests. Therefore was she turned into a pillar of salt.'"[203]
[203] Rev. Dr. Marcus Jastrow refers to this in an article on "The Symbolical Meaning of Salt," in _The Sunday School Times_ for April 28, 1894.
This idea of foul treachery as equivalent to faithlessness in the matter of salt, seems to be perpetuated in Da Vinci's famous painting of the Last Supper, where Judas Iscariot is represented as having overturned the salt-cellar.[204] And even among English-speaking peoples the spilling of salt between two persons is said to threaten a quarrel; as though they had already broken friendship.