1“And you shall make an altar for burning incense, acacia wood you shall make it. 2A cubit its length and a cubit its width, it shall be square, and two cubits its height; from the same piece its horns. 3And you shall overlay it with pure gold—its roof and its walls all around and its horns, and you shall make for it a golden molding all around. 4And two golden rings you shall make for it beneath its molding on its two flanks, you shall make on its two opposite sides, and they shall be housings for the poles with which to carry it. 5And you shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. 6And you shall set it before the curtain that is near the Ark of the Covenant in front of the cover that is over the Ark of the Covenant where I shall meet you. 7And Aaron shall burn upon it the aromatic incense morning after morning, when he tends the lamps he shall burn it. 8And when Aaron lights the lamps at twilight he shall burn it, a perpetual incense before the LORD for your generations. 9You shall not offer up on it unfit incense, nor burnt offering nor grain offering, and no libation shall you pour upon it. 10And Aaron shall atone on its horns once a year with the blood of the offense offering of atonement, once a year he shall atone on it for your generations. It is holy of holies to the LORD.”
11And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 12“When you count heads for the Israelites according to their numbers, every man shall give ransom for his life to the LORD when they are counted, that there be no scourge among them when they are counted. 13This shall each who undergoes the count give: half a shekel by the shekel of the sanctuary—twenty gerahs to the shekel—half a shekel, a donation to the LORD. 14Whosoever undergoes the count from twenty years old and up shall give the LORD’s donation. 15The rich man shall not give more and the poor man shall not give less than half a shekel to atone for their lives. 16And you shall take the atonement money from the Israelites and set it for the service of the Tent of Meeting, and it shall be a remembrance for the Israelites before the LORD to atone for their lives.” 17And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 18“And you shall make a laver of bronze and a stand of bronze for washing and place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and place water there. 19And Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet from it. 20When they come into the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water, that they do not die, or when they approach the altar to serve, to burn a fire offering to the LORD. 21And they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they do not die, and it shall be for them a perpetual statute, for him and for his seed, for their generations.”
22And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 23“And you, take you choice spices: five hundred weight wild myrrh, and aromatic cinnamon, half of that, two hundred fifty weight, and aromatic cane, two hundred fifty weight. 24And cassia, five hundred weight by the shekel of the sanctuary, and olive oil, a hin. 25And you shall make of it oil for sacred anointing, a perfumer’s compound, perfumer’s work, sacred anointing oil it shall be. 26And you shall anoint with it the Tent of Meeting and its furnishings and the Ark of the Covenant, 27and the table and all its furnishings and the lamp stand and its furnishings and the altar for incense, 28and the altar for burnt offering and all its furnishings, and the laver and its stand. 29And you shall consecrate them, and they shall be holy of holies, whoever touches them shall be consecrated. 30And Aaron and his sons you shall anoint, and you shall consecrate them to be priests to Me. 31And to the Israelites you shall speak, saying, ‘Oil for sacred anointing this shall be to Me for your generations. 32On a person’s flesh it shall not be poured, and in its proportions you shall make nothing like it. It is holy, it shall be holy for you. 33The man who compounds its like and who puts it on an unfit person shall be cut off from his people.’” 34And the LORD said to Moses, “Take you the fragrances balsam and onycha and galbanum, fragrances, and clear frankincense, equal part for part it shall be. 35And you shall make of it incense, a perfume compound, perfumer’s work, tinctured with salt, pure, sacred. 36And you shall pound it to fine powder and place some of it before the Ark of the Covenant in the Tent of Meeting where I shall meet you. Holy of holies it shall be to you. 37And the incense that you will make, in its proportions you shall not make for yourselves, holy it shall be for you to the LORD. 38The man who makes its like to smell it shall be cut off from his people.”
CHAPTER 30 NOTES
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1. an altar for burning incense. Like so many other features of the Tabernacle, small altars of this sort—two cubits square would be on the order of a foot and a half square—for the special purpose of burning incense were common in Canaanite sanctuaries, as archaeological investigation has shown. Although the Hebrew word for “altar” is derived from the root that means “to slaughter” or “to sacrifice,” its use here for a little golden square on which no sacrifices could be offered indicates that the term was applied to any raised platform dedicated to cultic purposes. The sacrificial altar was located in the outer court of the Tabernacle, the incense altar in the inner precinct directly in front of the Ark of the Covenant (verse 6). The placement of these regulations after the body of Tabernacle laws is commonly explained by the fact that they had nothing to do with the rites of installation. In any case, this chapter seems to be an appendix of miscellaneous items to the Tabernacle section: first instructions about the incense altar, then census regulations, then directions about the laver, and finally the recipe for the incense.
9. unfit incense. Literally, “strange [zarah] incense.” In the cultic passages, as we have already seen, “strange” indicates not “alien” but either a person (layman) or, as here, a substance that is not proper for introduction into the sanctum.
10. once a year with the blood of the offense offering of atonement. That one day would be the Day of Atonement. Aaron would have to carry blood from the outer court, where the animal sacrifice was offered, to conduct this ritual of expiation or purgation in which the four horns of the incense altar were daubed with blood.
12. When you count heads. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “lift up the head.”
every man shall give ransom for his life . . . when they are counted. It was a belief common to Israel and to the Mesopotamian cultures that it was dangerous for humans to be counted. Perhaps it was felt that assigning individuals in a mass an exact number set them up as vulnerable targets for malefic forces. The story of David’s ill-fated census in 2 Samuel 24, which triggers a plague, turns on this belief. The danger of destruction inherent in census taking could be averted by the payment of a “ransom” for each threatened life as a donation to the sanctuary. The supposed danger of the census thus becomes the rationale for the institution of a poll tax, which in turn will be an important source of revenue for the maintenance of the sanctuary and its officiants.
13. half a shekel by the shekel of the sanctuary. “Shekel” means “weight” in Hebrew, and the stress on weights here is a clear indication that the reference is to a fixed weight of silver rather than to a coin. (Coins came into use fairly late in the biblical period.) It seems likely that the specified “shekel of the sanctuary” was a heavier weight than the “silver shekels at the merchants’ tried weight” (Genesis 23:16) that Abraham pays to Ephron the Hittite. The average weight of actual shekels that have been unearthed is something over eleven grams, which would make the gerah, its twentieth part, rather small change.
23–24. myrrh . . . cinnamon . . . cassia. As with the names for precious stones, the exact identification of the sundry spices is uncertain (the items listed in verse 34 are especially doubtful). The first two terms mentioned, however, happily have cognates in other languages—mor and qinamon. The presence of the latter term in biblical Hebrew demonstrates the vitality of ancient international trade: cinnamon was originally raised in Ceylon and elsewhere in South Asia, and the word appears to have arrived in ancient Israel with the luxury import from wherever the plant was grown.
32. On a person’s flesh it shall not be poured. The person (ʾadam) clearly means a layperson, in contradistinction to a consecrated priest.
33. unfit person. Again, the term is zar, literally, “stranger,” and serves as a definition of what is meant by “person” in the previous verse. There is a complementarity of notions of unfitness to the cult. An unfit person or substance may not come or be brought before the altar. The sanctified compound of fragrances used for the incense to be burned on the altar may not be used outside the sanctuary for secular purposes, for the mere pleasure of enjoying the aroma.