Soil salinization has a significant negative impact on the yield and quality of soybean. It is one of the effective ways to improve the yield and quality of soybeans under salt stress by breeding salt-tolerant soybean varieties. Plant ERF transcription factors play important roles in responses to biotic and abiotic stresses， whereas there are few relevant studies in soybean. Based on RNA-Seq datasets under salt stress treatment， 549 soybean resequencing data and salt tolerance index data， as well as the soybean tissue expression data in the Soybean Expression Atlas database， the soybean ERF genes responding to salt stress and their elite alleles were identified. Three ERF genes were identified with natural variations， among which ERF158^H1， ERF166^H2 and ERF170^H1 haplotypes were elite alleles showing significantly higher salt tolerance. Nucleotide polymorphism analysis of the elite alleles showed that ERF170^H1 was detected with weakly artificially selection signals during soybean domestication， while ERF158^H1 and ERF166^H2 were gradually reduced or lost during domestication process. Therefore， eight ERF genes were identified likely being involved in the response of soybean to salt stress， and three of them were found to have elite alleles that can significantly promote soybean salt tolerance. Our findings provide a great significance to enrich and improve the molecular mechanism of soybean response to salt stress and breeding programs for salt tolerant soybean varieties.