Catholic Commentary
The Holy Anointing Oil and Incense
29He made the holy anointing oil and the pure incense of sweet spices, after the art of the perfumer.
Exodus 37:29 describes Bezalel's completion of the Tabernacle's sacred furnishings by crafting the holy anointing oil and pure incense according to divinely prescribed formulas. These substances consecrated the sanctuary and its ministers, with the oil prefiguring Christ's anointing and the incense symbolizing the prayers and praise ascending to God.
The anointing oil and incense that consecrated the Tabernacle are not ancient relics—they are the living ancestors of every sacramental anointing you will receive.
Together, oil and incense speak of a liturgy that engages the whole person — the anointed body and the ascending soul — in the worship of the living God.
Catholic tradition sees in this verse a profound anticipation of sacramental and liturgical theology. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the sacraments of the Old Covenant were "figures" that "prefigure the graces" poured out in Christ (CCC 1150). The holy anointing oil of the Tabernacle stands at the headwaters of a rich sacramental tradition: Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders, and the Anointing of the Sick all employ consecrated oils — the Oil of Catechumens, Sacred Chrism, and the Oil of the Sick. The use of Chrism, perfumed with balsam just as the Mosaic oil was blended with sweet spices, directly echoes this Exodus precedent. The Roman Rite's Chrism Mass, celebrated annually on Holy Thursday, preserves this ancient logic of consecrated oil as agent of divine sanctification.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (III, q.72, a.2), links the anointing of the Old Testament priesthood to the anointing of the baptized into Christ's threefold office of Priest, Prophet, and King. Pope St. John Paul II developed this theme in Christifideles Laici (§14), affirming that through Baptism and Confirmation every Catholic is anointed into active participation in Christ's mission.
The incense prefigures the Church's Liturgy of the Hours — the Prayer of the Church offered morning and evening (CCC 1174–1175) — as well as the perpetual intercession of the glorified Christ before the Father (Heb 7:25). That the incense was prescribed to be pure (Ex 30:35) suggests that true prayer must be free from self-seeking: it rises for God's glory alone. St. John of the Cross wrote that pure contemplative prayer, like pure incense, requires the burning away of all that is merely natural or self-willed.
For contemporary Catholics, Exodus 37:29 is an invitation to recover a sacramental seriousness about consecrated matter and liturgical prayer. When you are anointed at Confirmation, at Ordination, or at the Anointing of the Sick, you are touched by a substance with a 3,500-year liturgical history — consecrated oil standing in direct typological continuity with Bezalel's preparation in the wilderness. This is not ceremony; it is ontological transformation.
The incense offers a particular challenge: Can your daily prayer be described as pure — offered purely for God's glory rather than as a tool for extracting divine favor? The prescribed formula of the incense suggests that prayer has a shape given to us by God, not improvised by us. This is an argument for the Church's structured liturgical prayer — the Mass, the Rosary, the Liturgy of the Hours — over exclusively spontaneous prayer. Consider incorporating even five minutes of Evening Prayer (Vespers) into your day, letting your prayer rise like incense at the close of day, as the Church has done continuously since the Tabernacle stood in the wilderness.
Commentary
Literal Meaning and Narrative Placement
Exodus 37:29 stands at the close of the chapter detailing Bezalel's crafting of the Tabernacle's most sacred furnishings — the Ark, the mercy seat, the table of showbread, the lampstand, and the golden altar of incense. The final verse crowns this catalog with the two perfumed substances that would animate the liturgy of the entire sanctuary: the shemen ha-mishchah qodesh (the holy anointing oil) and the qetoret ha-sammim (the pure incense of spices).
The anointing oil's precise formula was given to Moses in Exodus 30:23–25: myrrh, cinnamon, aromatic cane, cassia, and olive oil — five ingredients of extraordinary costliness and rarity, blended "after the art of the perfumer." This was no improvised mixture. The Hebrew roqeach, translated "perfumer" or "apothecary," refers to a craftsman who blends aromatic substances with technical expertise — here elevated to sacred art by divine specification. The oil was used to anoint the Tabernacle itself, all its furnishings, and Aaron and his sons (Ex 30:26–30), consecrating them as qodesh qodashim — "most holy."
The pure incense — also with a divinely prescribed formula (Ex 30:34–35) — was burned daily on the golden altar in the Holy Place, sending fragrant smoke rising toward the Holy of Holies. Both substances were so sacred that God explicitly forbade their replication for secular use, under pain of being "cut off from the people" (Ex 30:32–33, 38).
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The crafting of these substances by Bezalel, filled with the Spirit of God (Ex 31:3), prefigures how all sacred ministry operates: through divine empowerment channeled through human skill and obedience. The oil and incense are not decorative; they are operational — they make the sanctuary and its ministers holy, that is, genuinely set apart for communion with God.
The anointing oil finds its richest typological fulfillment in Christ, whose very name — Christos in Greek, Mashiach in Hebrew — means "the Anointed One." He is not merely anointed with oil; He is the fullness of all that anointing signifies: consecration, empowerment, and total belonging to the Father. The Church Fathers recognized the messianic resonance immediately. St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote that the holy oil poured over Aaron's head (Ps 133:2) foreshadows the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ and, through Him, upon all the baptized.
The incense is a universally recognized biblical symbol for prayer. Psalm 141:2 pleads, "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you," and Revelation 8:3–4 makes this typology explicit: an angel offers incense with the prayers of the saints on a golden altar before the throne of God — an unmistakable echo of the Tabernacle liturgy. Incense also suggests the — the work of divine praise that rises unceasingly, as it did morning and evening in the Tabernacle.