myrrh: a costly fragrant resin, bitter to the taste but sweet-smelling, harvested from a desert shrub and used as perfume, incense, and sacred anointing spice
Myrrh is the dried sap of a thorny shrub that grows in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa. Harvesters cut the bark (or let it bleed on its own), and the gum hardens into reddish lumps that smell sweet even though they taste bitter. From about the time of the early kings, caravans carried it up the long incense road through Arabia to Israel and Egypt, which is why it turns up as a mark of wealth and luxury rather than an everyday item.
The Bible uses the one substance in three settings.
- It is a holy ingredient: the largest single spice in the sacred anointing oil, and (by echo) part of the perfume of the royal wedding in Psalm 45.
- It is a cosmetic and a language of love: the oil that scents Esther before she meets the king, and the perfume the lovers breathe over each other again and again in the Song of Songs.
- And in Proverbs 7 that same romantic perfume is sprinkled on the bed of a woman luring a young man to ruin, a deliberate dark echo of the love poetry.
Myrrh reached buyers in several forms and grades. It could be
- solid lumps carried in a little pouch
- a fine oil steeped with the resin
- a top grade that seeped out on its own before the tree was even cut
Scholars still argue over what one or two of the grading words mean, but the substance itself is not in doubt: everywhere the word appears, it names this same sweet, expensive resin.
How to understand the modifier attached to myrrh in the phrase mar-deror at Exodus 30:23, since the second word normally means "freedom, release."
- contestedA quality term for the finest, purest, self-flowing first grade of myrrh (the resin that seeps out before the tree is tapped), taken as "choice" or "pure"; the reading of the ancient translations.; Targum Onkelos, ad loc.; Vulgate (myrrhae primae electae); William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19-40 (Anchor Yale Bible 2A, 2006), 484-488
- contested"Free-flowing" myrrh, keeping the ordinary sense of release, so that the resin runs out of its own accord.; Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus (JPS Torah Commentary, 1991), 195; Cornelis Houtman, Exodus III (HCOT, 2000), 567-569
Whether mor over at Song of Songs 5:5 means "flowing, liquid" myrrh or "choice, prime" myrrh.
- majority"Flowing" or "liquid" myrrh, taking the second word in its plain sense and matching the dripping imagery of the verse.; Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs (Hermeneia, 1990), 167, 172; Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Continental Commentary, 1994), 192-193; Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (NICOT, 2001), 169
- minority"Choice, prime, finest" myrrh, the premium self-flowing grade, on the basis of an idiom for standard or current value.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C, 1977), 525-528; Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (1985), 145-146
Whether mor over at Song of Songs 5:13 means "flowing, liquid" myrrh or "choice, prime" myrrh.
- majority"Flowing" or "liquid" myrrh, taking the second word in its plain sense and matching the dripping imagery of the verse.; Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs (Hermeneia, 1990), 167, 172; J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (OTL, 2005), 207-208; Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Continental Commentary, 1994), 200-202
- minority"Choice, prime, finest" myrrh, the premium self-flowing grade, on the basis of an idiom for standard or current value.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C, 1977), 540-545; Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (1985), 151