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Exodus 30 · a question people ask

Could only the high priest burn incense?

In the text

Exodus 30 names Aaron: "Aaron shall burn incense of sweet spices on it every morning" (30:7). When the tabernacle was first set up, Moses himself "burned incense of sweet spices on it, as the LORD commanded Moses" (40:27). After that, the passages speak of Aaron's offspring. Numbers says "no stranger who isn’t of the offspring of Aaron, would come near to burn incense before the LORD" (Numbers 16:40). When King Uzziah tried, the priests told him, "It isn’t for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD, but for the priests the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense" (2 Chronicles 26:18). In Luke, Zacharias, "a certain priest" (Luke 1:5), is chosen by lot "to enter into the temple of the Lord and burn incense" (Luke 1:9).

The verses

“Aaron shall burn incense of sweet spices on it every morning. When he tends the lamps, he shall burn it. When Aaron lights the lamps at evening, he shall burn it, a perpetual incense before the LORD throughout your generations.”
Exodus 30:7-8 · World English Bible
“He put the golden altar in the Tent of Meeting before the veil; and he burned incense of sweet spices on it, as the LORD commanded Moses.”
Exodus 40:26-27 · World English Bible
“to be a memorial to the children of Israel, to the end that no stranger who isn’t of the offspring of Aaron, would come near to burn incense before the LORD, that he not be as Korah and as his company; as the LORD spoke to him by Moses.”
Numbers 16:40 · World English Bible
“There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the priestly division of Abijah. He had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.”
Luke 1:5 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Exodus 30

Exodus 30: A perpetual incense

The golden altar before the veil needed its own atonement "once in the year" (30:10). Every man counted paid the same half shekel, rich or poor, as "a ransom for his soul" (30:12), and that silver went into the sockets of the sanctuary and the veil (38:25-27).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions