XXX.
THE ALTAR OF INCENSE.
(1) Thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon. — Why the directions concerning the altar of incense were delayed until this place, instead of being given when the rest of the furniture of the holy place was described (Exodus 25), it is impossible to say. But there is certainly no reason to suspect a dislocation of the text. The mode in which Aaron is spoken of in Exodus 30:7-10 implies a previous mention of his consecration to the high priesthood.
That incense would be among the offerings which God would require to be offered to Him had appeared already in Exodus 25:6. Its preciousness, its fragrance, and its seeming to mount in cloud after cloud to heaven, gave it a natural place in the symbolism of worship, and led to its employment in the religious rites of a variety of nations. Egyptian priests continually appear on the monuments with censers in their hands, in which presumably incense is being offered, and the inscriptions mention that it was imported from Arabia, and used largely in the festivals of Ammon (Records of the Past, vol. x., pp. 14-19). Herodotus tells us that the Babylonians consumed annually a thousand talents’ weight of it at the feast of Belus (i. 183). The employment of it by the Greeks and Romans in their sacrifices is well known. Here again, as so often in the Mosaical dispensation. God sanctioned in His worship an innocent rite, which natural reason had pointed out to man as fitting and appropriate, not regarding its employment in false religions as debarring it from adoption into the true.
Of shittim wood shalt thou make it. — Of the same main material as “the brazen altar” (Exodus 27:1), but covered differently.