Exodus 30:34

COMPOUNDING OF INCENSE, Exodus 30:34-38.

34. Stacte This is the name used by the Greek and Latin version as representing the Hebrew נשׂ Š, nataph, which denotes something that drops, and is commonly held to be the gum of the storax tree, which is found in Syria, and grows to the height of fifteen feet or more . The gum which exudes from its bark has a fragrant odour, and is mentioned by Pliny as being burned as a perfume in his time .

Onycha This word occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures . Pliny mentions onyx as a shell which was used in the composition of perfume, and most versions and interpreters have understood it as the winged strombus, a species of mollusk which is said to abound in the Red Sea. The fact, however, that all the other ingredients of this composition were vegetable should incline us rather to think of it as the exudation of some plant or tree. Galbanum is another word not elsewhere found in the Old Testament, but seems to be the same as the Greek χαλβανη , which is found in the Septuagint of this verse, and is the name of the gum of a plant which is found in Africa, Syria, Persia, and India . The Opoidia Galbanifera has been adopted by the Dublin College in their Pharmacopoeia as that which yields the galbanum . Frankincense, so often referred to in the Scriptures as a kind of precious perfume, is here mentioned for the first time . It was the odoriferous resin of some kind of plant or tree of which the ancient writers do not seem to have possessed any specific knowledge. That it was of a white colour may be inferred from its Hebrew name, לבונה , and according to Isaiah 60:6, and Jeremiah 6:20, it was found in Sheba .

Modern botanists identify it with the Boswellia serrata, which grows luxuriantly in the mountainous parts of India.