The Boundaries of Holy Service Reach Scent, Water, and Silver

The word for incense, qetoret, comes from qatar, to go up in smoke. It was at this altar that Zacharias was serving when the angel appeared to him “on the right side of the altar of incense” (Luke 1:11).

At a cubit square and two high, about eighteen inches by three feet, this is the smallest altar in the sanctuary. Small horned limestone altars of much this size have been excavated at Megiddo and other Israelite sites.

Gold everywhere, top, sides and horns, is why the rest of the book calls it “the golden altar” (39:38; 40:5), to tell it from the bronze one in the court. Revelation 8:3 sees “the golden altar which was before the throne”.

The Hebrew is unclear whether there are two rings in all, one on each side, or two on each side, four in total, as the ark had. The verse says “two golden rings” and then “upon the two sides”, and both readings have defenders.

Numbers 4:11 describes the march: the golden altar is covered with a cloth of blue, wrapped in tachash skins, and then put on its staves. The gold was never meant to be seen on the road.

Hebrews 9:3–4 speaks of the holiest place as having “the golden censer”, and 1 Kings 6:22 calls Solomon’s incense altar the one “by the oracle”. It stood outside the veil but belonged to what lay behind it.

“Dresseth” is heitiv, to make good: trimming wicks and refilling the lamps. In the Second Temple, the Mishnah says, the incense was assigned by lot to a priest who had never offered it before, so that most priests did it once in a lifetime.

The incense is lit with the evening lamps, so the smoke of the day ends where it began, at the lampstand. Revelation 5:8 connects the imagery to worship: the elders hold “golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints”.

“Strange incense” is qetoret zarah. Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu died offering “strange fire”, esh zarah, before the LORD (Leviticus 10:1–2): the same adjective, and the same kind of unauthorised act.

The Day of Atonement is meant here; Leviticus 16:18–19 has the high priest put blood on the horns of the altar. “Atonements” is the plural kippurim, the word that gives Yom Kippur its name.

With the incense altar the furniture is complete, and a new speech begins. It turns from objects to people, and to the counting of Israel’s men.

David’s census in 2 Samuel 24 ends in a plague that kills seventy thousand, and no ransom is mentioned there. This verse names the danger centuries before that count is taken.

To “pass among them that are numbered” is to cross over to the counted side, a picture of counting by passing people across a line, as flocks “pass again under the hands of him that telleth them” (Jeremiah 33:13). A gerah is literally a grain, the smallest weight.

Twenty is the age at which men go to war (Numbers 1:3). The same age marks the wilderness judgment: of those counted “from twenty years old and upward”, none but Caleb and Joshua would enter the land (Numbers 14:29–30).

Matthew 17:24–27 shows the tax in the first century: the collectors of the didrachma, the half shekel, ask Peter whether Jesus pays, and Peter finds a stater, worth two half shekels, in a fish’s mouth, enough for both of them.

The collection outlived the wilderness. King Joash revives “the collection... of Moses the servant of God” to repair the temple (2 Chronicles 24:6, 9), and after the exile Nehemiah 10:32 sets it at a third of a shekel.

Another short speech, for the one piece of furniture in the sanctuary made for water. Everything else holds fire, blood, oil, bread or testimony.

Exodus 38:8 records where the bronze came from: “the lookingglasses of the women assembling” at the door of the tent. Polished bronze mirrors became the basin in which priests washed. The “foot” is its stand, kan.

Hands and feet only, because these are what touch holy things and holy ground. The priests evidently served barefoot, as Moses stood unshod before the bush in 3:5; the text never mentions priestly sandals.

Each of the two places of service needs its own washing: going into the tent, and coming near to the altar. Jesus’ saying in John 13:10 has the same shape: “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet.”

Psalm 26:6 turns the washing into a line of prayer: “I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O LORD.” The later Jewish rite of washing the hands before eating traces part of its lineage to this command.

“Moreover” opens a fourth speech, and it brings the only two recipes in the Law of Moses: this oil and the incense of verse 34. Both come with a ban on copying them.

“Pure myrrh” is mor deror, free-flowing myrrh, the resin that seeps from the bark. Five hundred shekels is roughly twelve pounds; Esther’s preparation began with “six months with oil of myrrh” (Esther 2:12). The calamus, qaneh, is a fragrant cane.

Cassia, qiddah, is a bark related to cinnamon. Some fifteen hundred shekels of spice, well over thirty pounds, go into a hin of oil, about a gallon, and the rabbis debated how so little oil could take up so much; boiling out an extract is one answer.

The apothecary is a roqeach, a perfumer, from raqach, to mix spices. Ecclesiastes 10:1 uses his work for a proverb: “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour.”

The list starts with the tent itself and then the ark, the holiest object, and works outward. Leviticus 8:10 and Numbers 7:1 record Moses anointing the tabernacle and everything in it.

The utensils are anointed with their furniture. The tongs and snuffdishes of 25:38 receive the same oil as the lampstand they serve, and the plates and bowls the same as the table.

The oil reaches out into the court, to the bronze altar and the laver, down to the laver’s stand. What stands in the open air is as fully consecrated as what stands behind the veil.

The Hebrew kol hannoge’a can also be read “whoever touches them must be holy”: a condition of approach rather than holiness passing by contact. Several modern translations prefer that reading here and at 29:37.

Leviticus 10:7 shows the anointing binding the sons after Nadab and Abihu died: they may not leave the door of the tent to mourn, “for the anointing oil of the LORD is upon you”.

A rabbinic tradition (Horayot 11b) held that the oil Moses made was never used up and lasted until King Josiah hid it away. The verse says only that it is holy “throughout your generations”.

“Man’s flesh” is adam, ordinary people. Kings were later anointed with oil, as Samuel anointed Saul from a vial (1 Samuel 10:1), but nothing says it was this compound; the prohibition is on copying the recipe and on common use.

“Cut off from his people” is the penalty called karet. It first appears in Genesis 17:14 for the uncircumcised, and in 12:15 for eating leaven at Passover. The copying of a perfume is placed in the same category.

Stacte, nataf, is a drop of resin; onycha, shecheleth, is probably the shell plate of a sea snail, burned for its scent; galbanum, chelbenah, is a bitter resin. Frankincense, levonah, is named from lavan, white, for its pale colour.

“Tempered together” is memullach, literally salted. Leviticus 2:13 requires salt with every grain offering, and here even the incense is seasoned with it.

“Beat some of it very small” is shachaq, to grind to powder, the verb of Psalm 18:42, “Then did I beat them small as the dust before the wind.” The ground portion is laid “before the testimony”, as close to the ark as anything outside the veil.

In the Second Temple the house of Avtinas kept the method secret. The Mishnah (Yoma 3:11) records them criticised for it, and the Talmud gives their answer: they refused to teach it lest it be used in the worship of idols.

Later Jewish tradition (Keritot 6a) lists eleven ingredients in the temple incense, expanding the four named here. The verse names only one forbidden motive for copying it: to enjoy the scent for oneself.