Footnote

b Some commentators view this as a positive expression, noting that harvesting salt for use as a preservative has long been a profitable industry in the Dead Sea region. Note, though, that the account pointedly says that those marshy waters “will not be healed.” They remain lifeless, unhealed, because the life-giving water from Jehovah’s house does not reach them. So it seems that, in this instance, the saltiness of those marshes is meant in a negative sense.​—Ps. 107:33, 34; Jer. 17:6.