Exodus 30:7-9

30:7 Aaron is to burn sweet incense ¹  on it morning by morning; when he attends ²  to the lamps he is to burn incense. ³  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. 30:9 You must not offer strange incense on it, nor burnt offering, nor meal offering, and you must not pour out a drink offering on it.

Exodus 30:34-38

30:34 The Lord said to Moses: “Take ⁴  spices, gum resin, ⁵  onycha, ⁶  galbanum, ⁷  and pure frankincense ⁸  of equal amounts ⁹  30:35 and make it into an incense, ¹⁰  a perfume, ¹¹  the work of a perfumer. It is to be finely ground, ¹²  and pure and sacred. 30:36 You are to beat some of it very fine and put some of it before the ark of the testimony in the tent of meeting where I will meet with you; it is to be most holy to you. 30:37 And the incense that you are to make, you must not make for yourselves using the same recipe; it is to be most holy to you, belonging to the Lord. 30:38 Whoever makes anything like it, to use as perfume, ¹³  will be cut off from his people.”

Leviticus 10:1-2

Nadab and Abihu

10:1 Then ¹⁴  Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his fire pan and put fire in it, set incense on it, and presented strange fire ¹⁵  before the Lord, which he had not commanded them to do. 10:2 So fire went out from the presence of the Lord ¹⁶  and consumed them so that they died before the Lord.

Leviticus 16:11-13

The Sin Offering Sacrificial Procedures

16:11 “Aaron is to present the sin offering bull which is for himself, and he is to make atonement on behalf of himself and his household. He is to slaughter the sin offering bull which is for himself, 16:12 and take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord ¹⁷  and a full double handful of finely ground fragrant incense, ¹⁸  and bring them inside the veil-canopy. ¹⁹  16:13 He must then put the incense on the fire before the Lord, and the cloud of incense will cover the atonement plate which is above the ark of the testimony, ²⁰  so that he will not die. ²¹ 

Numbers 16:35

16:35 Then a fire ²²  went out from the Lord and devoured the 250 men who offered incense.

Numbers 16:46-48

16:46 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take the censer, put burning coals from the altar in it, place incense on it, and go quickly into the assembly and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone out from the Lord – the plague has begun!” 16:47 So Aaron did ²³  as Moses commanded ²⁴  and ran into the middle of the assembly, where the plague was just beginning among the people. So he placed incense on the coals and made atonement for the people. 16:48 He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped.

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,” ²⁵  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, ²⁶  to enter ²⁷  the holy place ²⁸  of the Lord and burn incense. 1:10 Now ²⁹  the whole crowd ³⁰  of people were praying outside at the hour of the incense offering. ³¹ 

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 ³²  before the Lamb. Each ³³  of them had a harp and golden bowls full of incense (which are the prayers of the saints). ³⁴ 

Revelation 8:3-4

8:3 Another ³⁵  angel holding ³⁶  a golden censer ³⁷  came and was stationed ³⁸  at the altar. A ³⁹  large amount of incense was given to him to offer up, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar that is before the throne. 8:4 The ⁴⁰  smoke coming from the incense, ⁴¹  along with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand.

[30:7]  ¹ tn The text uses a cognate accusative (“incense”) with the verb “to burn” or “to make into incense/sweet smoke.” Then, the noun “sweet spices” is added in apposition to clarify the incense as sweet.

[30:7]  ² tn The Hebrew is בְּהֵיטִיבוֹ (bÿhetivo), a Hiphil infinitive construct serving in a temporal clause. The Hebrew verb means “to make good” and so in this context “to fix” or “to dress.” This refers to cleansing and trimming the lamps.

[30:7]  ³ sn The point of the little golden altar of incense is normally for intercessory prayer, and then at the Day of Atonement for blood applied atonement. The instructions for making it show that God wanted his people to make a place for prayer. The instructions for its use show that God expects that the requests of his people will be pleasing to him.

[30:34]  ⁴ tn The construction is “take to you,” which could be left in that literal sense, but more likely the suffix is an ethical dative, stressing the subject of the imperative.

[30:34]  ⁵ sn This is from a word that means “to drip”; the spice is a balsam that drips from a resinous tree.

[30:34]  ⁶ sn This may be a plant, or it may be from a species of mollusks; it is mentioned in Ugaritic and Akkadian; it gives a pungent odor when burnt.

[30:34]  ⁷ sn This is a gum from plants of the genus Ferula; it has an unpleasant odor, but when mixed with others is pleasant.

[30:34]  ⁸ tn The word “spice is repeated here, suggesting that the first three formed half of the ingredient and this spice the other half – but this is conjecture (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 400).

[30:34]  ⁹ tn Heb “of each part there will be an equal part.”

[30:35]  ¹⁰ tn This is an accusative of result or product.

[30:35]  ¹¹ tn The word is in apposition to “incense,” further defining the kind of incense that is to be made.

[30:35]  ¹² tn The word מְמֻלָּח (mÿmullakh), a passive participle, is usually taken to mean “salted.” Since there is no meaning like that for the Pual form, the word probably should be taken as “mixed,” as in Rashi and Tg. Onq. Seasoning with salt would work if it were food, but since it is not food, if it means “salted” it would be a symbol of what was sound and whole for the covenant. Some have thought that it would have helped the incense burn quickly with more smoke.

[30:38]  ¹³ tn Or to smell it, to use for the maker’s own pleasure.

[10:1]  ¹⁴ tn Although it has been used elsewhere in this translation as an English variation from the ubiquitous use of vav in Hebrew, in this instance “then” as a rendering for vav is intended to show that the Nadab and Abihu catastrophe took place on the inauguration day described in Lev 9. The tragic incident in Lev 10 happened in close temporal connection to the Lord’s fire that consumed the offerings at the end of Lev 9. Thus, for example, the “sin offering” male goat referred to in Lev 10:16-19 is the very one referred to in Lev 9:15.

[10:1]  ¹⁵ tn The expression “strange fire” (אֵשׁ זָרָה, ’esh zarah) seems imprecise (cf. NAB “profane fire”; NIV “unauthorized fire”; NRSV “unholy fire”; NLT “a different kind of fire”) and has been interpreted numerous ways (see the helpful summary in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 132-33). The infraction may have involved any of the following or a combination thereof: (1) using coals from someplace other than the burnt offering altar (i.e., “unauthorized coals” according to J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:598; cf. Lev 16:12 and cf. “unauthorized person” אִישׁ זָר (’ish zar) in Num 16:40 [17:5 HT], NASB “layman”), (2) using the wrong kind of incense (cf. the Exod 30:9 regulation against “strange incense” קְטֹרֶת זָרָה (qÿtoreh zarah) on the incense altar and the possible connection to Exod 30:34-38), (3) performing an incense offering at an unprescribed time (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 59), or (4) entering the Holy of Holies at an inappropriate time (Lev 16:1-2).

[10:2]  ¹⁶ tn See the note on 9:24a.

[16:12]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and he shall take the fullness of the censer, coals of fire, from on the altar from to the faces of the Lord.”

[16:12]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and the fullness of the hollow of his two hands, finely ground fragrant incense.”

[16:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and he shall bring from house to the veil-canopy.”

[16:13]  ²⁰ tn The text here has only “above the testimony,” but this is surely a shortened form of “above the ark of the testimony” (see Exod 25:22 etc.; cf. Lev 16:2). The term “testimony” in this expression refers to the ark as the container of the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them (see Exod 25:16 with Deut 10:1, 5, etc.).

[16:13]  ²¹ tn Heb “and he will not die,” but it is clear that the purpose for the incense cloud was to protect the priest from death in the presence of the Lord (cf. vv. 1-2 above).

[16:35]  ²² tn For a discussion of the fire of the Lord, see J. C. H. Laughlin, “The Strange Fire of Nadab and Abihu,” JBL 95 (1976): 559-65.

[16:47]  ²³ tn Heb “took.”

[16:47]  ²⁴ tn Or “had spoken” (NASB); NRSV “had ordered.”

[1:11]  ²⁵ 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]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ tn This is an aorist participle and is temporally related to the offering of incense, not to when the lot fell.

[1:9]  ²⁸ 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]  ²⁹ tn Grk “And,” but “now” better represents the somewhat parenthetical nature of this statement in the flow of the narrative.

[1:10]  ³⁰ 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]  ³¹ tn The “hour of the incense offering” is another way to refer to the time of sacrifice.

[5:8]  ³² 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]  ³³ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[5:8]  ³⁴ sn This interpretive comment by the author forms a parenthesis in the narrative.

[8:3]  ³⁵ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[8:3]  ³⁶ tn Grk “having.”

[8:3]  ³⁷ sn A golden censer was a bowl in which incense was burned. The imagery suggests the OT role of the priest.

[8:3]  ³⁸ tn The verb “to station” was used to translate ἑστάθη (Jestaqh) because it connotes the idea of purposeful arrangement in English, which seems to be the idea in the Greek.

[8:3]  ³⁹ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[8:4]  ⁴⁰ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[8:4]  ⁴¹ tn The expression τῶν θυμιαμάτων (twn qumiamatwn) is taken as a “genitive of producer,” i.e., the noun in the genitive produces the head noun.