Ointment

Ointment in Scripture is a scented oil or soft salve — ordinarily olive oil compounded with aromatic spices, gums, or resins — used for anointing persons, for bodily adornment, and for preparing a body for burial. The Hebrew text speaks of shemen, "oil," of mishchah, "anointing oil," and of the roqach, the perfumer who blended such substances (Exodus 30:25); the Greek of the New Testament uses myron for the same class of costly perfumed oil (Mark 14:3; John 12:3).

The fullest description is the holy anointing oil of the tabernacle, made from liquid myrrh, fragrant cinnamon, fragrant cane, and cassia in measured weights, worked into olive oil "after the art of the perfumer" (Exodus 30:23, 30:25). Scripture treats it as a reserved substance rather than a commodity: it is applied to Aaron and his sons to consecrate them for priestly service (Exodus 30:30), it may not be poured on a stranger, and anyone who compounds a like mixture is to be cut off from his people (Exodus 30:33). Bezalel is credited with making both this oil and the sanctuary's pure incense of sweet spices (Exodus 37:29). The consecrated anointing and the ordinary perfumed oil of daily life are thus kept distinct.

Ordinary ointment is assumed throughout Scripture, and its value is weighed rather than condemned in itself. A good name is set above "fine perfume" (Ecclesiastes 7:1), while Amos indicts those who "anoint themselves with the best oils" but are not grieved for "the affliction of Joseph" (Amos 6:6) — the charge concerns indifference to injustice, not the oil. The Gospels record one particular and extravagant use: a woman brings an alabaster jar of "ointment of pure nard—very costly," breaks it, and pours it over Jesus' head at Bethany (Mark 14:3); in John's account Mary anoints his feet with a pound of the same nard until the house is filled with its fragrance (John 12:3), and the objection is raised that it might have been sold for three hundred denarii for the poor (John 12:5). Historically, a denarius was a laborer's daily wage, so the sum named is roughly a year's earnings, and nard was an imported aromatic rather than a local product, which bears on the price.

Christian traditions differ over what these anointings establish for later practice. Those that maintain sacramental anointing — the consecration of chrism in Eastern and Catholic churches, or the anointing of the sick — read the tabernacle oil of consecration and the New Testament anointings as prototypes of a continuing rite. Traditions in the Reformed and Baptist stream generally treat the tabernacle oil and the Bethany anointing as historical episodes with no continuing ritual obligation, and speak of the Spirit's anointing in a figurative sense. How the Bethany scene itself is to be read — as a preparation for burial, a royal or messianic gesture, or a costly act of love set against a disciple's calculation — is a matter of interpretive judgment rather than settled agreement.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.