' DR. G. BIRDWOOD ON THE GENUS BOSWELLIA. 113 
burnt-offerings, and sacrifices, and meat-offerings and incense [frankincense], and bringing 
sacrifices of praise, unto the house of the Lord ””. 
These passages emphatically derive frankincense from Sheba. 
The Hebrew words for incense are quite different from the Hebrew word for frankin- 
cense (Lebonah); but in most of the passages where they are found, frankincense may 
be understood as necessarily a constituent of the sacred incense of the Jewish ritual. 
Kitto says that these words for incense (miktar, hitter, and keturoth) all signify to raise 
an odour by burning, and are applied not only to the offering of incense, but of sacrifices, 
and he points out that the word which denotes the incense of sweet spices in Exod. 
xxx. 1, describes an incense of fat in Psalm lxvi. 15 : “I will offer unto thee burnt sacri- 
fices of fatlings, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats." But the 
word may be used here to give poetic expression to the passage, as the thing itself was 
to give a sweet savour to the burnt sacrifices. In 1 Chron. vi. 49, the word for incense 
is also used, according to Calmet, for the fat of victims offered on, the altar of the 
burnt-offerings, but here, it may be supposed, without poetical licence. Gradually, as 
the spiritual discernment of the Jews developed, the offering of incense itself sublimed 
into prayer, as indicated in the figurative language of David, in Psalm exli. 2, “ Let my 
prayer be set forth before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening 
sacrifice.” And the same figure is used in the magnificent imagery of the Apocalypse: 
“ And the four-and-twenty elders . . . having every one of them harps, and golden vials 
full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints"? ‘And another angel came and 
stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, 
that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was 
before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, 
ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand ””. : 
The Jews buried their dead, the burning of the bodies of Saul and his sons” having 
been quite exceptional; but still they largely used unguents and spices, probably inclu- 
ding frankincense, in their sepulchral rites. The dead body was anointed with spike- 
nard*, and “they wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews 
is to bury "5, And of the burial of Asa it is written, “ And they buried him in his own 
sepulchre, which he had made for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed 
which was filled with sweet odours and divers kinds prepared by the apothecary's art: 
and they made a very great burning for him””. 
. The en in de aes of the ar of the dead body of Patroclus, would, by sub- 
stituting the presentation of cows to Brahmins for the sacrifice of horses at the pyre, and 
milk for wine to quench its embers, serve to describe the funeral rites of a wealthy high- 
caste Hindoo of Bombay, in which frankincense, with all manner of balsamic substances, 
and fragrant woods and oils, are largely used ; and we know that in the burning of their 
dead and in their sacrifices the Greeks, like the Romans, used frankincense extra- 
vagantly ; but yet frankincense is not anywhere named in the Iliad or Odyssey, and it 
* Jeremi ii : ¡A 3 Rev. viii. 3, 4. 
‘ Toe s = xii. 7. * John, xix. 39, 40. 
7 2 Chron. xvi. 14; Pet. Cunzus de Respub. Hebreorum. Leyden, 1631. : 
; Q 
