Familiar sayings in the Bible
Choose one answer below.
The correct answer is Earth.
Matthew 5:13 uses salt of the earth as a description, then asks what use salt has if it loses its savor. The rest of the verse imagines such salt being discarded and trodden underfoot. Its value and usefulness are therefore central to the image within the passage.
Source: Matthew 5:13, King James Version
Biblical language has entered ordinary English through sermons, literature, conversation, and repeated quotation. A compact comparison can travel far from the story in which it first appears. Along the way, a phrase may lose a word, acquire a modern substitute, or combine two neighboring thoughts into a single saying. The King James Version, or KJV, supplies the exact wording used here. Its expressions belong to several kinds of writing: proverbs, parables, letters, speeches, and accounts of particular events. The speaker and audience matter. A sentence spoken by a character is not necessarily advice endorsed by the narrator, and a proverb quoted in a dispute may be challenged in the next verse. Returning to the passage helps separate those uses. Book, chapter, and verse references show where the words occur and make it possible to compare a popular shortened expression with the fuller sentence and its setting. The surrounding sentences remain part of the meaning, even when a quotation circulates on its own.