olive oil: the plain oil pressed from olives, the everyday staple burned in lamps, rubbed on the body, and traded by the jarful
Olive oil was not a specialty item in the ancient Mediterranean world. It was one of the three staples of ordinary life, named in the same breath as grain and wine, pressed from the fruit of the olive tree (ἐλαία) that covered the hillsides of Galilee and Judea. A household without it was a household in trouble. That ordinariness is the key to the word: wherever it turns up, the writer is naming a plain, familiar substance, not a rare or sacred one.
Because it was everywhere, it did several jobs at once. It burned in the small clay lamps that lit a house after dark, so running out of it meant sitting in the dark. It went onto wounds and sick bodies, since it soothed and sealed the skin, making it the closest thing most people had to medicine. It was rubbed on the head as everyday grooming and as the courtesy a host owed a guest. And it was measured out in large quantities, bought, owed, priced, and shipped, one of the goods that made merchants wealthy.
The New Testament puts all four to work:
- The lamps of the unprepared young women run dry for want of it.
- A beaten traveler's wounds are treated with it and with wine.
- Elders pour it on the sick while they pray over them.
- Merchants ship it as cargo, and a rider bringing famine prices is told not to harm it.
The one picture-use, the "oil of gladness" poured out on the Son in Hebrews 1:9, works precisely because the literal act was so familiar. To have oil poured on your head was to be honored, refreshed, and singled out for celebration, which is exactly what that line claims for him.
Nuances
Whether the oil the elders apply to the sick person in James 5:14 is everyday medicine or a symbolic act that accompanies the prayer.
- majorityA symbolic act tied to the prayer: the anointing is a physical sign done in the Lord's name, and the healing is credited to the prayer and to God rather than to any property of the oil.; Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James (Pillar New Testament Commentary), 2000; Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC), 1982; Scot McKnight, The Letter of James (NICNT), 2011
- minorityOrdinary medicinal use: oil was standard treatment for the sick, and the elders apply it as normal care while they pray.; BDAG (Danker, ed.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. 2000, s.v. ἔλαιον (grouping Mark 6:13, Luke 10:34, and James 5:14 as medicinal use)