Corpse or King?
It’s New Year’s eve. Christmas is behind us, right? Well, not for many Christians around the world, including our friends in Belarus. For them January 6 is the big day. December 25 is the celebration of the child’s birth, but Epiphany, January 6, marks the arrival of gentile wise men on the scene. (Did you wonder where we got the 12 days of Christmas?) In solidarity with them, we have our wise men from the crèche making their way across the kitchen counter for a January 6 arrival.
For this reason, it seemed an appropriate time to pull out an adapted Christmas meditation from Solomon Latte:
Song of Songs 3:6 Who is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, like a fragrant billow of myrrh and frankincense, every kind of fragrant powder of the traveling merchants?
Say three words—“gold,” “frankincense,” and “myrrh”—and what comes to mind? If you’re like most people, I suspect you picture the magi bringing gifts to the Baby Jesus. But did you know we also find gold, incense, and myrrh in Song of Songs? “Gold” appears five times, “incense” three times, and “myrrh” seven times.
Of this trilogy, we find “myrrh” most often. The beloved says her lover is a sachet of myrrh. Later she says he smells like myrrh. And then he’s dripping with myrrh. No doubt about it—she definitely associates him with myrrh.
We know myrrh is a perfume, but a quick glance through the entire Bible tells us myrrh appears more often as a scent for men than women. So let’s call it cologne instead of perfume, okay?
“Myrrh” means “bitter.” And myrrh was used for more than providing fragrance on special occasions. It also anesthetized pain. And people used it to prepare the dead for burial. Jesus turned down wine mixed with myrrh when He hung from the cross. And Nicodemus brought about seventy-five pounds of spices, including myrrh, so he could prepare Jesus’ body for burial.
Because so many of us read the New Testament more than the Old, we may associate myrrh with death, not life. I’ve heard it said, for example, that the myrrh that the magi brought to baby Jesus foreshadowed his death.
It’s a nice theory. And lots of people believe it. But I doubt it is true. For one thing, what would you think if someone gave you a casket or a headstone as a baby gift? “Here, I hope you like it. I brought you some toys, and some booties, and some expensive embalming fluid.”
I don’t think so.
More significantly, the wise men had no idea Jesus was going to die to save us from our sins. Even Jesus’ own disciples didn’t get it. Only Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’s sister, who anointed Jesus’ feet before the crucifixion, appears to have understood “before the fact” that Jesus had to die before He would reign as king.
A king was born. That’s why the magi brought myrrh! It was a gift fit for a king. Consider Esther, who, before her night with the king spent six months treating herself with oil of myrrh (Esth. 2:12). Centuries later when the magi found Herod, they asked the location of the one born king of the Jews, saying they had come to worship Him (Matt. 2:2). And when they came to the house and found Him, they fell down in worship, offering that king their gifts. Those gifts included myrrh.
In Psalm 45:6-8 we read of God as king, and the psalmist writes, “All your garments are perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cassia. From the luxurious palaces comes the music of stringed instruments that makes you happy.”
The connection of myrrh with death in Jesus’ birth narrative misses the strong association of myrrh with riches, royalty, and celebration. There’s time enough on Good Friday to focus on the loss. Christmas is about the arrival of the king.
The use of myrrh in Song of Songs helps us to see that the myrrh the magi brought to Jesus was a gift fit for a king. They went to great expense and inconvenience to honor the King of Kings. How can we do any less?