Exodus 20:24

20:24 ‘You must make for me an altar made of earth, ¹  and you will sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, ²  your sheep and your cattle. In every place ³  where I cause my name to be honored ⁴  I will come to you and I will bless you.

Exodus 30:8

30:8 When Aaron sets up the lamps around sundown he is to burn incense on it; it is to be a regular incense offering before the Lord throughout your generations.

Exodus 30:23-26

30:23 “Take ⁵  choice spices: ⁶  twelve and a half pounds ⁷  of free-flowing myrrh, ⁸  half that – about six and a quarter pounds – of sweet-smelling cinnamon, six and a quarter pounds of sweet-smelling cane, 30:24 and twelve and a half pounds of cassia, all weighed ⁹  according to the sanctuary shekel, and four quarts ¹⁰  of olive oil. 30:25 You are to make this ¹¹  into ¹²  a sacred anointing oil, a perfumed compound, ¹³  the work of a perfumer. It will be sacred anointing oil.

30:26 “With it you are to anoint the tent of meeting, the ark of the testimony,

Exodus 37:29

37:29 He made the sacred anointing oil and the pure fragrant incense, the work of a perfumer.

Deuteronomy 12:5-6

12:5 But you must seek only the place he ¹⁴  chooses from all your tribes to establish his name as his place of residence, ¹⁵  and you must go there. 12:6 And there you must take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, ¹⁶  your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.

Psalms 66:15

66:15 I will offer up to you fattened animals as burnt sacrifices,

along with the smell of sacrificial rams.

I will offer cattle and goats. (Selah)

Isaiah 2:2

2:2 In the future ¹⁷ 

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure ¹⁸ 

as the most important of mountains,

and will be the most prominent of hills. ¹⁹ 

All the nations will stream to it,

Malachi 1:11

1:11 For from the east to the west my name will be great among the nations. Incense and pure offerings will be offered in my name everywhere, for my name will be great among the nations,” ²⁰  says the Lord who rules over all.

Luke 1:9-10

1:9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, ²¹  to enter ²²  the holy place ²³  of the Lord and burn incense. 1:10 Now ²⁴  the whole crowd ²⁵  of people were praying outside at the hour of the incense offering. ²⁶ 

Revelation 5:8

5:8 and when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders threw themselves to the ground ²⁷  before the Lamb. Each ²⁸  of them had a harp and golden bowls full of incense (which are the prayers of the saints). ²⁹ 

[20:24]  ¹ sn The instructions here call for the altar to be made of natural things, not things manufactured or shaped by man. The altar was either to be made of clumps of earth or natural, unhewn rocks.

[20:24]  ² sn The “burnt offering” is the offering prescribed in Lev 1. Everything of this animal went up in smoke as a sweet aroma to God. It signified complete surrender by the worshiper who brought the animal, and complete acceptance by God, thereby making atonement. The “peace offering” is legislated in Lev 3 and 7. This was a communal meal offering to celebrate being at peace with God. It was made usually for thanksgiving, for payment of vows, or as a freewill offering.

[20:24]  ³ tn Gesenius lists this as one of the few places where the noun in construct seems to be indefinite in spite of the fact that the genitive has the article. He says בְּכָל־הַמָּקוֹם (bÿkhol-hammaqom) means “in all the place, sc. of the sanctuary, and is a dogmatic correction of “in every place” (כָּל־מָקוֹם, kol-maqom). See GKC 412 §127.e.

[20:24]  ⁴ tn The verb is זָכַר (zakhar, “to remember”), but in the Hiphil especially it can mean more than remember or cause to remember (remind) – it has the sense of praise or honor. B. S. Childs says it has a denominative meaning, “to proclaim” (Exodus [OTL], 447). The point of the verse is that God will give Israel reason for praising and honoring him, and in every place that occurs he will make his presence known by blessing them.

[30:23]  ⁵ tn The construction uses the imperative “take,” but before it is the independent pronoun to add emphasis to it. After the imperative is the ethical dative (lit. “to you”) to stress the task to Moses as a personal responsibility: “and you, take to yourself.”

[30:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “spices head.” This must mean the chief spices, or perhaps the top spice, meaning fine spices or choice spices. See Song 4:14; Ezek 27:22.

[30:23]  ⁷ tn Or “500 shekels.” Verse 24 specifies that the sanctuary shekel was the unit for weighing the spices. The total of 1500 shekels for the four spices is estimated at between 77 and 100 pounds, or 17 to 22 kilograms, depending on how much a shekel weighed (C. Houtman, Exodus, 3:576).

[30:23]  ⁸ sn Myrrh is an aromatic substance that flows from the bark of certain trees in Arabia and Africa and then hardens. “The hardened globules of the gum appear also to have been ground into a powder that would have been easy to store and would have been poured from a container” (J. Durham, Exodus [WBC], 3:406).

[30:24]  ⁹ tn The words “all weighed” are added for clarity in English.

[30:24]  ¹⁰ tn Or “a hin.” A hin of oil is estimated at around one gallon (J. Durham, Exodus [WBC], 3:406).

[30:25]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it.”

[30:25]  ¹² tn The word “oil” is an adverbial accusative, indicating the product that results from the verb (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, §52).

[30:25]  ¹³ tn The somewhat rare words rendered “a perfumed compound” are both associated with a verbal root having to do with mixing spices and other ingredients to make fragrant ointments. They are used with the next phrase, “the work of a perfumer,” to describe the finished oil as a special mixture of aromatic spices and one requiring the knowledge and skills of an experienced maker.

[12:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[12:5]  ¹⁵ tc Some scholars, on the basis of v. 11, emend the MT reading שִׁכְנוֹ (shikhno, “his residence”) to the infinitive construct לְשָׁכֵן (lÿshakhen, “to make [his name] to dwell”), perhaps with the 3rd person masculine singular sf לְשַׁכְּנוֹ (lÿshakÿno, “to cause it to dwell”). Though the presupposed nounשֵׁכֶן (shekhen) is nowhere else attested, the parallel here with שַׁמָּה (shammah, “there”) favors retaining the MT as it stands.

[12:6]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “heave offerings of your hand.”

[2:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “in the end of the days.” This phrase may refer generally to the future, or more technically to the final period of history. See BDB 31 s.v. ַאחֲרִית. The verse begins with a verb that functions as a “discourse particle” and is not translated. In numerous places throughout the OT, the “to be” verb with a prefixed conjunction (וְהָיָה [vÿhayah] and וַיְהִי [vayÿhi]) occurs in this fashion to introduce a circumstantial clause and does not require translation.

[2:2]  ¹⁸ tn Or “be established” (KJV, NIV, NRSV).

[2:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “as the chief of the mountains, and will be lifted up above the hills.” The image of Mount Zion being elevated above other mountains and hills pictures the prominence it will attain in the future.

[1:11]  ²⁰ sn My name will be great among the nations. In what is clearly a strongly ironic shift of thought, the Lord contrasts the unbelief and virtual paganism of the postexilic community with the conversion and obedience of the nations that will one day worship the God of Israel.

[1:9]  ²¹ tn Grk “according to the custom of the priesthood it fell to him by lot.” The order of the clauses has been rearranged in the translation to make it clear that the prepositional phrase κατὰ τὸ ἔθος τῆς ἱερατείας (kata to eqo" th" Jierateia", “according to the custom of the priesthood”) modifies the phrase “it fell to him by lot” rather than the preceding clause.

[1:9]  ²² tn This is an aorist participle and is temporally related to the offering of incense, not to when the lot fell.

[1:9]  ²³ tn Or “temple.” Such sacrifices, which included the burning of incense, would have occurred in the holy place according to the Mishnah (m. Tamid 1.2; 3.1; 5-7). A priest would have given this sacrifice, which was offered for the nation, once in one’s career. It would be offered either at 9 a.m. or 3 p.m., since it was made twice a day.

[1:10]  ²⁴ tn Grk “And,” but “now” better represents the somewhat parenthetical nature of this statement in the flow of the narrative.

[1:10]  ²⁵ tn Grk “all the multitude.” While “assembly” is sometimes used here to translate πλῆθος (plhqo"), that term usually implies in English a specific or particular group of people. However, this was simply a large group gathered outside, which was not unusual, especially for the afternoon offering.

[1:10]  ²⁶ tn The “hour of the incense offering” is another way to refer to the time of sacrifice.

[5:8]  ²⁷ tn Grk “fell down.” BDAG 815 s.v. πίπτω 1.b.α.ב. has “fall down, throw oneself to the ground as a sign of devotion or humility, before high-ranking persons or divine beings.”

[5:8]  ²⁸ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[5:8]  ²⁹ sn This interpretive comment by the author forms a parenthesis in the narrative.