Ver. 6. Or can that which is unsavoury be eaten, which is not seasoned with salt? (Job 6:6). 8. The law understood carnally is unsavoury, seasoned with salt by Christ.—In the law the salt of the letter is the power of the hidden understanding. Whoever therefore, intent on carnal observances, was unwilling to understand this spiritually, what else did he eat but unsavoury food? But into this food the acknowledged Truth put salt, when He taught that the savour of hidden understanding lay concealed in the law, saying: 'If ye believed Moses, ye would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me' (John 5:46). And again: 'Have salt in yourselves, and have peace among yourselves' (Mark 9:50).
But because before the coming of the Mediator Judaea held the law carnally, the Gentile world refused to be subjected to its precepts commanding hard things. It refused therefore to eat unsavoury food, because before it received the seasoning of the Spirit it dreaded to keep the force of the letter. For what one of the Gentiles would bear that which is there commanded—to cut the flesh of one's sons for the observance of religion, to cut off the faults of words by death? Whence too it is well further subjoined: