ועשית מזבח מקטר קטורת, "You shall construct an altar for offering up incense, etc. I have already explained (Exodus 25,9) why the construction of this altar was mentioned last. The reason for the word תעשה (in addition to the directive "you shall make"), is to prevent something which Solomon did when he had no acacia wood and constructed the altar for incense completely out of gold.

כי תשא את ראש, "When you count the sum, etc." Why did the Torah choose the expression תשא to describe counting instead of the customary תפקד as we find in Numbers 3,15? Why did the Torah mention ראש and did not content itself with writing כי תשא את בני ישראל, seeing that the Israelites were not to be counted by means of a head count? Besides, what did the Torah have in mind with the word לפקדיהם?

Our sages comment that a sinner causes his head to be bowed as a result of his sins. Evil is defined as something which causes man to look only at what is below him, at the ground, whereas קדושה, sanctity, results in raising up one's head and elevating a person spiritually. We note that the Torah describes even the cave of Machpelah as undergoing an elevation after Abraham purchased it (Genesis 23,17). Our sages in Bereshit Rabbah 58,8 describe the cave as undergoing an elevation. Inasmuch as the Torah commands this count after the sin of the golden calf as Rashi concluded based on the words ונתת אותו על עבודת אהל מועד "and you will appoint it for the service of the Tent of Meeting" in verse 16, we can understand why the expression כי תשא, "when you will raise," is appropriate. We encounter a similar use of the word תשא in Genesis 40,13 when the Torah refers to Pharaoh "raising" the head of the chief of the butlers who would be reinstated into his position. In our case, the Israelites will be enabled to hold their heads high again as a result of this count which served as atonement for the sin of the golden calf. Up until this time they had not felt able to raise their heads due to the shame of having had a part in that sin. לפקדיהם, "according to their number;" this is to be understood as parallel to Numbers 31,49 where the Torah states that not a single one of the 12,000 men whom Moses had sent on the punitive expedition against the Midianites had become a casualty during that war. There too the words נשאו את ראש meant that "they counted the sum." Shabbat 64 explains that the words ולא נפקד ממנו איש, meant that not a single one of those soldiers was guilty of a sin. ונתנו איש כפר נפשו, "each one will give (this) as ransom for his soul to G'd." This is a reference to the Israelites each having forfeited their lives through participation in the sin of the golden calf. בפקד אותם, "when numbering them." The meaning is literal.

The reason the Torah added the conjunctive letter ו before the word נתנו, is that in order to be effective as ransom each Israelite first had to acknowledge his guilt; only after he had done so could he contribute the half-shekel as ransom for his life.

Another meaning of the word לפקדיהס is that the only reason a count was justified at all was the fact that their number had diminished (due to the people who had either died or been executed during that episode). The count was meant to establish how many of the people had survived. The count in Numbers 31,49 we mentioned was also undertaken only to determine if and how many soldiers had become casualties during that campaign. Basically, a census was to be undertaken only in order to count the number of soldiers going to war or returning from war. The extra letter ו in ונתנו is to tell us of an additional condition, i.e. that these people were not only to be counted but that they also had to contribute a half-shekel as ransom for their souls. This was a unique occurrence. Future counts of the Jewish people were never accompanied by the handing over of a half-shekel of every person to be counted.

ולא יהיה בהם נגף בפקד אותם, "so that there not be a plague amongst them when numbering them." Why did the Torah write the expression בפקד אותם twice in the same verse? Seeing that at the time when the commandment of this count was given Israel was already guilty of the sin of the golden calf, one could assume that at other times it would not matter if the count would be a head count instead of counting the number of half-shekel coins, the Torah had to refer to the future by saying: "so that there will not be a plague when they are being counted."

There is also an assurance here that not only would the Israelites obtain their atonement by means of this count and the manner in which it was conducted, but it would protect them against a plague in the future. We learn by inference that a head count would be liable to result in a plague for those so counted.

There may well be yet another message in our verse. G'd commanded two things. 1) The number of the Israelites should be arrived at by means of each person to be numbered handing over an object, i.e. ונתנו, as the Torah stated in verse 13: זה יתנו, "this is what they shall give." This was the atonement factor of this count. The second commandment implied here is that a count should never be a head count but should be conducted by means of some other object. This is why the Torah had to add: "so that there shall not be a plague on them, etc." The latter condition is not one that enhances the objective of the census, it merely ensures that there will be no negative fall-out. We find this confirmed when King Saul numbered the people he mobilised in his war against the men of Yavesh Gilead, where we are told (Samuel I 11,8) "he numbered them by means of shards" (based on Rashi, Yuma 22)." Unless you interpret the verse in this fashion we must ask who permitted Saul to conduct the count by means of shards seeing that the Torah had spoken of each person handing over a half-shekel? When you accept our interpretation that in future people to be counted would simply hand over some object (other than a coin) you will have no difficulty.

I have examined the count David conducted (Samuel II 24). According to scripture there it appears that David (or better Yoav at David's command) conducted a head count. How could King David be guilty of such a gross error? While it is true that our sages in Berachot 62 claim that David was misled by Heaven into committing an error which every student in an elementary school would not become guilty of, the meaning there is somewhat different than appears at first glance. The Talmud applied to David the verse in Samuel I 26,19 (which he himself had coined when proclaiming his loyalty to Saul) "If the Lord has incited you against me, etc." The fact that David suggested that G'd would incite Saul against him, an intolerable thought, produced an evil force (angel) in accordance with a general statement to that effect in Avot 4,13. The force the sinner creates will eventually be used against him who has created it. Thus it was not G'd who seduced David into sinning by letting him forget such an elementary prohibition but David was the author of his own seduction. All of this is part of the syndrome which our sages called עברה גוררת עברה, "one sin brings another sin in its wake." Inasmuch as a person of the calibre of David most certainly would not intentionally accuse G'd of inciting people's minds to do something wrong, the kind of "evil angel" his exclamation produced could not retaliate by causing him to commit a sin other than an unintentional one. In this instance the vehicle chosen was to cause him to forget a basic halachah concerning the conduct of a census.

While this explanation enables us to understand why David committed such an oversight, it does not explain why Yoav, his commander-in-chief, did not mention David's error to him before accepting the directive to perform a head count of the people. If he understood David's directive to count the people as an order to comply with the traditional method of counting by means of a half-shekel to be handed over by each person being counted, why did he not do so? On the other hand, if David specifically ordered a head count why did Yoav not remonstrate with him reminding him of the halachah? Why did Yoav carry out a command which contravened Torah law? In situations like this we apply the principle of דברי הרב ודברי התלמיד דברי מי שומעים, that when the instruction by a human king (or human being) are contrary to standing orders of a senior king, i.e. G'd, we must obey the orders of the senior king, i.e. G'd. Maimonides spells out this rule very clearly in chapter 3 of his treatise on Hilchot Melachim. Even assuming that both David and Yoav had been ignorant of the halachah at the time, why did not the Jewish Supreme Court intervene before allowing a head count to take place? Even every individual about to be counted should have objected to the procedure, if only for fear of the plague threatened by the Torah against such a procedure! If their compliance was due to their considering the saving of the half-shekel as more important than jeopardising their lives, they should at least have argued that they could be counted by means of the shards as Saul had done when he counted the soldiers he mobilised against the Ammonites! How could it be that the entire nation was so careless and submitted to a procedure endangering their lives needlessly?

I believe we must assume that David ordered a census without mentioning whether it should be a head count or otherwise. He did not think he needed to specify the details of how to conduct the census seeing Yoav was a learned man and could be assumed to know the relevant halachot. He therefore assumed that Yoav would conduct the counting of the people in a manner similar to the count performed by Saul by means of shards. When the Talmud in Berachot 62 points to the fact that David's count was not by means of the "ransom for the soul," this means that whereas Yoav did not take a half-shekel from the people whom he numbered, he did take something else such as Saul did. We have already stated that the meaning of "counts should not be conducted בלא דבר," is that unless there was a genuine reason for conducting a census it should not be undertaken. In the case of David, no such reason was evident. Yoav himself protested the need to count the people when David directed him to undertake a census. Perhaps the plague could have been avoided if Yoav had counted the people by means of the half-shekel contribution as in our portion here. You will note that we read in Samuel II 24,1: "G'd continued to be angry at Israel and He enticed David against them to say: "go and count Israel and Yehudah." It is evident from this verse that Israel had already been guilty of another (undisclosed) sin. When they were counted for no good reason they attracted to themselves the attribute of Justice and were punished for their sin.

We may view the matter thus. Seeing that one of the conditions for counting the Jewish people is that there is a genuine reason for the count, the moment even one of the conditions justifying the count is absent, the people being counted are subject to a plague. David's error was that he had forgotten this. This also explains why Yoav questioned the need to take a census and tried to dissuade David (24,3) from counting the people. Had Yoav seen a genuine need to count the people he would not have objected to it. Clearly, if Yoav objected to the count because he saw no need for it, he would have objected even more strenuously if the census was to be a head count, something expressly prohibited. Perhaps when Yoav saw that David was very insistent to go through with the count, he concluded that the king must have an adequate reason justifying him in giving such a directive; he complied [though incompletely, Ed.] believing David must have a good reason for wanting to know the number of Israelites bearing arms. He may have feared to appear like a rebel if he refused point blank. At any rate, Yoav did not conduct a head count. We cannot fault the individual Israelites for not raising objections as they were not even aware individually that a census was being taken. Besides, they did not have to know which were good reasons for conducting a census and which were not. Since when does each individual Jew have to subject every single directive of the king to his personal scrutiny?

We may say that there are three הלכות which govern census taking. The first הלכה concerns the census taken after the episode of the golden calf at which time there was a need not only to count heads but each person subject to the census had to contribute a half-shekel in order to atone for his share in that sin. The second הלכה concerns a census which is taken whenever there is a legitimate reason to count the people. At such times there is no need for half-shekel contributions, a shard is just as good to avoid making a head count of the individuals. This is what Saul did when he counted the people. The third הלכה concerns a census which is not justified by legitimate considerations. Such counts are to be avoided at all costs. David's error was that he forgot this particular הלכה because of G'd allowing him to be misled. In such cases, however, if the people to be counted were to each give a half-shekel at the time this would protect them against a plague. You may well ask why David needed to count the people instead of relying on the annual half-shekel contribution for the communal sacrifices which every male over 20 years of age had to contribute? We would have to answer that the half-shekel contributions were not a reliable instrument since even minors used to contribute the half-shekel as we are told in Shekalim 1,3, whereas the numbers counted by Yoav were men who were trained in warfare (Samuel II 24,9). David wanted to know how many men he could send into battle, if the need arose.

זה יתנו, "This is what they shall give, etc." We are told in Tanchuma on this verse that G'd showed Moses a coin of fire situated beneath His throne. It appears strange that G'd did not rather inform Moses of the weight of the coin in question. This would have been easier to comprehend than a coin made of fire. Any image such as that described by the Midrash could at best have given Moses an approximation of the size of that coin.

Moreover, why was G'd interested in a half-shekel? He should have at least asked for a full shekel! Why did G'd forbid the wealthy to contribute more and the poor to contribute less than the half-shekel?

There are mystical elements involved in this legislation which are not evident to the average person. The Midrash alluded to this when it described the manner in which G'd explained the appearance, i.e. significance, of the coin in question. The very expression זה יתנו of which our verse speaks begs the question. G'd told Moses that the visible element in the legislation is secondary to the invisible element. This is why the coin described as being shown to Moses is presented as only an image, not as the real thing. We have mentioned several times that the Presence of G'd is usually referred to by our sages as the Throne of G'd's Glory. This "Throne" and its location are determined in large measure by the conduct of the Jewish people. The prophet Isaiah refers to this in Isaiah 50,1 when he describes G'd telling the Jewish people that not He had divorced them, but their iniquities had resulted in the alienation between them. Solomon uses a similar hyperbole in Proverbs 16,28 when he describes quarrel-someness as alienating one's friends. The alienation between Israel and its G'd resulted from the episode of the golden calf which affected the roots of all the Jewish souls. G'd therefore commanded that the people give a "half-shekel" to symbolise that their previous action had resulted in something whole having become divided. The contribution of this half-shekel was to repair the damage done to the whole through the people's participation in the sin of the golden calf. When G'd showed Moses the coin of fire as being immediately beneath the throne of G'd, He drew his attention to the mystical dimension of this legislation. Payment of a ransom is not merely a transaction in this material world, but has far-reaching effects in a spiritual domain. Performance of G'd's commandments is predicated on the participation of the heart of the performer in his deed, i.e. רחמנא לבא בעי. Every מצוה is meant to close a gap that may exist between man and G'd. This is why the Torah added the words את תרומת השם, the contribution restores one's closeness with G'd.

We can now understand that if the wealthy person were allowed to contribute more, the whole purpose of the half-shekel would be denied. The same applies to the prohibition for the poor to contribute less than the half-shekel. The symbolic meaning of the "half" was paramount in drawing people's attention to what was to be accomplished. The Torah wanted to stress this element and that is why it first stressed the details about the amount. Ordinarily, the Torah should have spoken about a תרומה, a gift, a contribution, and only afterwards about the size of the contribution. The Torah changed its regular syntax in order to draw our attention to the primacy of the amount of the gift.

If we are looking for a moral-ethical dimension in this paragraph we may find in it an answer to the age-old problem of why some outstandingly pious and valuable people die prematurely. At first glance such people appear to share the same fate as that of confirmed sinners to whom G'd does not grant a normal lifespan. When the average individual reflects on this phenomenon he is apt to arrive at one of two conclusions. 1) He will deny our system of reward and punishment and conclude that there is no point in living a life dedicated to the service of the Lord. 2) Or, if he is not daring enough to accuse his mentors of having misled him and of having taught him a set of illusory values, he will conclude that the person who died prematurely was a charlatan and that his "piety" was only make-believe so that G'd punished him by having him die early. The result of such an attitude is that one would deny anyone who died prematurely the good reputation he had established while alive. The Torah counters such thinking by saying: כי תשא את ראש בני ישראל, "when you elevate i.e. remove to a higher world, a leader of the Jewish community through premature death," לפקדיהם, "and he does not live a normal lifespan," then the reason is ונתנו איש כפר נפשם, that "the people who have now been deprived of the leadership provided by such a person have to pay for their sins by being deprived of the presence of the pious person in question." We have used the word לפקדיהם in the sense that the Torah used it in Numbers 31,49 when it means becoming a casualty. The idea of the leader serving as atonement for the multitude is taken from our sages' interpretation of Song of Songs 1,14: אשכול הכפר דודי לי, "the person who combines within him every virtue serves as atonement for me for my beloved (G'd)." The expression לפקדיהם may also be understood in accordance with the comment of Zohar Chadash on the words כל העובר על הפקדים in verse 13. The Zohar translates these words as: "anyone who transgresses the commandments, etc." This means that the reason for the premature absence (death) of these pious people we referred to are the sins of their contemporaries. Let no one draw negative conclusions about the character of people who die prematurely and have led an exemplary life as far as their contemporaries were able to judge.

G'd said that inasmuch as it is their contemporaries who have caused the premature death of such pious people, the ones they left behind have to pay a ransom for having been the root cause of this early death by the righteous. This is the meaning of ונתנו איש כפר נפשו. We find this concept spelled out in greater detail in Isaiah 57,2: כי מפני הרעה נאסף הצדיק, "the righteous has died because of the evil (sins)." This can mean that: a) the premature death of the righteous acts as a catalyst for the people whom he left behind to mend their ways, or, b) the righteous was removed from the earth before his time in order that he not share the retribution G'd will bring on his contemporaries. One of the ways in which the survivors express their repentance is the payment of the half-shekel as a ransom for their own sins.

The words: בפקוד אותם, mean that the process of repentance had to commence immediately, i.e. when they were being counted." In the event that they would be tardy in doing so, G'd threatened the people in question with the plague as punishment for their participation [even though passively, seeing the active participants had already been executed by either the Levites or by the hand of G'd. Ed.] It is an historic fact (according to Sanhedrin 113) that whenever pious people died prematurely in order to awaken the survivors to do Teshuvah, failure by the survivors to do so resulted in almost immediate mass retribution by G'd. The author cites occurrences in his own time as proof of this theory.

When the Torah commences with the words: זה יתנו, this introduces the manner in which atonement is to be achieved. The word זה is a veiled reference to the Torah scroll which is described as זה in Joshua 1,8: לא ימוש ספר התורה הזה מפיך. Our sages also say that just as the Torah commanded the king to always have a Torah scroll with him (Deut. 17,19), so G'd Himself always has a Torah scroll in front of Him. This is the mystical dimension of G'd pointing with a finger and saying to Moses: "This is what they are to give!" G'd must have referred to something which lies in front of Him all the time, seeing He did not define the "This" further. The message is that the atonement will accrue to the people to be counted by means of their immersing themselves in the study of the Torah and in the performance of the commandments which are written therein. According to Menachot 110 Torah study protects a person, assures him of atonement for his sins, and it is the single most potent factor in amassing merits in this world. It is an effective antidote against punishment even if the person studying Torah had been guilty of many sins previously. The Talmud there interprets the verse in Leviticus 7,37: זאת התורה לעולה, למנחה, ולחטאת ולאשם to mean that if one concentrates on the study of Torah this is equivalent to one's having offered all the kinds of sacrifices listed in this verse in order to achieve atonement. The relationship of זה and כל העובר על הפקדים is that anyone who has violated the orders (of G'd) will be able to rehabilitate himself by means of the Torah. The words כל העובר על הפקדים may also be read as belonging to what follows, i.e. that they should contribute a half-shekel each. Seeing that not everyone is capable of "immersing" himself in Torah, we have here an allusion to the traditional partnership of Zevulun and Yissachar, the former supplying the latter with the financial means to enable him to devote himself to Torah without the need to worry about making a livelihood (compare Sotah 21 on the subject). There are many people nowadays who allocate half of their money (חצי שקל) for the scholars who toil studying Torah.

The words בשקל הקודש may be translated as "for the sake of the holy shekel, i.e. Torah." Alternatively, the meaning could be that people who contribute of their money to enable scholars to study undisturbed thereby acquire a merit similar to those who do the studying. Perhaps this is what Solomon referred to in Kohelet 7,12 כי בצל החכמה בצל הכסף, "for to sit in the shelter of wisdom is to sit in the shelter of money." Were it not for the money supplied by generous donors the scholar could not afford to sit in the academy and study Torah. Concerning the "holy shekel" and the misleading term בקע לגלגלת, we are taught in Bechorot 5 that the holy shekel comprised twice the weight of silver in an ordinary shekel. There is a profound moral significance in this dual use of the word shekel. If a scholar who is subsidised by a layman should feel that inasmuch as he "shares" the merit of his Torah study with the donor he does so at the cost of "losing" part of the merit accumulated by his study, and both of them would wind up with only "half a shekel's worth of merit," this is not so. Inasmuch as the "holy shekel" is worth twice what an ordinary shekel is worth, both parties individually enjoy the full merit due to their respective input.

When the Torah describes a full shekel as consisting of 20 geyrah, this is an allusion to the two units of ten [the standard symbol for anything holy, as the author has mentioned on occasion, Ed.] which together form the concept of שכינה, the Presence of G'd, i.e. His throne and His sitting on it in His capacity as King of Kings. These two units are intended to fuse, just as the ideal personality of a human being is achieved through his studying Torah on the one hand and his practicing its precepts on the other. The combination of these two factors leads to the ideal possible. When the Torah emphasises מחצית השקל תרומה לה׳, this is an allusion to the damage caused to the union of G'd and His throne through the sin of the golden calf the Israelites had become guilty of. This damage can be repaired only through Torah study and performance of its precepts. Even when two people combined in fulfilling these two requirements, each one will receive the reward for having fulfilled both parts of the commandment as we already pointed out in connection with the respective roles of Zevulun and Yissachar.

העשיר לא ירבה means that he who donates his half-shekel in this world should not view himself as having made a substantial donation, begrudging it, and thereby reducing its moral value. On the other hand, והדל לא ימעיט means that a person should not use the excuse of his poverty to refrain from making his fair contribution. In both instances the consideration that must be uppermost in the heart of either the wealthy or the poor is לתת תרומת ה׳ לכפר על נפשותיכם, that this relatively insignificant gift to G'd counts as a ransom payment and atones for the capital sin committed during the episode of the golden calf. Considering that we have it on the authority of Satan in Job 2,4 that man willingly sacrifices all his material possessions in order to save his life, the amount G'd demanded is very paltry indeed.

The Torah stipulates that the minimum age at which a person had to make this half-shekel contribution was from twenty years and up. The Torah revealed a secret here when it did not demand that males from the age of 13 and up had to make this contribution. Seeing that males are considered as adults from the age of 13, why would teenagers not have been liable for this ransom? They also had participated in the golden calf episode! The Torah told us here that a person's personality (נפש) has not matured until age 20 as he has not had time to absorb and comprehend the various spiritual components which make up a true Israelite until he has reached that age. This is the mystical dimension of Psalms 2,7: "You are My son, I have fathered you this day." Compare what the Zohar Mishpatim 98 has to say on that verse. [The Zohar on Exodus 21,9 writes that man is called בן from the age of 13, and בן להקב׳ה from the age of 20. Ed.] There is a sound reason why man should not be liable to punishment at the hands of heaven until he has reached that age, seeing that he has not yet matured emotionally and intellectually. Such maturity is essential to enable us to successfully battle the evil urge and to appreciate G'd's message to man. By the time man has reached the age of 20 he is considered as fully equipped to cope with all kinds of temptations.

ונתת שמה מים. "you will put water into it." Apparently it did not have to be Moses who had to fill the basin with water. Any non-priest was qualified to perform that chore.

את ידיהם ואת רגליהם. "their hands and their feet." The two words את were not really necessary. The reason the Torah wrote the word את each time is to tell us that washing of the hands without washing of the feet at the same time, or washing of the feet without washing of the hands at the same time did not accomplish its purpose. In other words the word את really means עם. The source for our explanation can be found in Zevachim 19 where we are told that the priest had to sanctify hands and feet simultaneously.

חק עולם, an eternal law. Even though the priest may have just emerged from immersing himself in a ritual bath in order to purify himself from a more severe category of impurity, this does not relieve him of the need to wash his hands and feet from the water of the כיור. The Torah warns the priest for the fifth time not to risk the death penalty to warn him that the ritual immersion did not replace the commandment to wash their hands and feet before either entering the Sanctuary or approaching the copper altar in the courtyard to perform service therein.

ואתה קח לך, "And as for you, take for yourself, etc." The plain meaning of the verse is that Moses was to pay for the anointing oil out of his own pocket. This is why the Torah prefaced the directive with the word ואתה. Moses was to perform this particular commandment personally, as opposed to the other commandments concerning which G'd had also addressed him in direct speech, commanding him to perform the respective directive. Even though the Torah included the oil and the various spices in the list of items to be donated by the general public (25,3), the Torah here revealed its intention that these items be contributed by Moses personally.

We have a Baraitha in Keritut 5 according to which Moses boiled the oil he took to anoint the priests with during the seven-day inaugural service of the Tabernacle. The remnants of the oil were preserved for future occasions. We have been taught that no such oil was ever again prepared at any time as the oil Moses had prepared was used again and again and it did not diminish in quantity. Maimonides rules in chapter in chapter 1 of his treatise Kley Hamishkan that apart from the quantity of anointing oil prepared by Moses, none was ever made again. This is the additional dimension of the words ואתה קח לך, indicating to Moses that only he would have the privilege to prepare this oil for anointing. Yalkut Shimoni item 764 sees in these words an allusion to the fact that in Messianic times it will be the resurrected Moses who will personally perform the Temple service. While it is true that the Torah also uses the expression: קח לך in connection with the fragrances for the frankincense in verse 34, the word ואתה does not appear in connection with that directive.

וקנמן בשם מחציתו, "and half as much sweet cinnamon, etc." According to the Talmud in Keritut 5 this means that Moses was to bring five hundred units of sweet cinnamon but was to use only half of it in preparing the oil for anointing. The Talmud wonders if perhaps the directive in the Torah meant that Moses was only to bring two hundred and fifty units, i.e. "half," just like the amount of Kneh bossem mentioned immediately afterwards. The answer given is that if this had been the Torah's intention the directive should have read: קנמן בשם וקנה בשם מחצה, ומחצה חמישים ומתאים. Thus far the Talmud on the subject.

Perhaps we can suggest an additional answer to the question raised by the Talmud. If the Torah had meant for Moses to contribute only a total of 250 units of sweet cinammon, the word "half of it," would have been totally superfluous; who does not know that 250 is half of 500? The Torah intended for two quantities of 250 units to be weighed [on opposite sides of the scale but that only one half was to be mixed in as an ingredient at that time. Ed.]

I have seen a comment by Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra who writes that it is not the custom of the Arabs to add even as much as the weight of a single grain of mustard to the recipe according to which they prepare such oils for incense. I do not think that this is correct. The process of weighing requires that one adds the quantities gradually in order to know when the correct weight has been achieved. I have seen that when the most experienced goldsmiths weigh gold they add another small weight to one side of the scales [and then presumably withdraw it, Ed.] in order to be certain that they have the correct weight. The reason that the Talmud did not mention our answer may be that according to the understanding of the Talmud the one unit of 250 remained separate at all times. The word מחציתו, "half of it," would then mean that Moses was to bring two amounts of 125 units each.

קדש הוא, "it is holy." This refers to the quantity being sacred. Even if the oil would be compounded of materials not listed here, i.e. something altogether profane, a combination of components in the quantities mentioned here would make it "sacred" in the sense of "forbidden." Anyone concocting such a mixture would be as guilty as a layman offering a total offering or sin-offering on his own behalf. If all such a person wanted to do was to train himself in the art of making such compositions, or in order to donate it to the community, this is permissible as we learned in Keritut 5.

The wording: "it is holy and it shall remain holy" may have yet another meaning. The words "it is sacred" refer to the oil for anointing made by Moses; it possessed an additional degree of holiness in that any private person using it to smear it on himself would be guilty of Karet. The Talmud understands the words "from it" in verse 33 as referring to the oil of anointing prepared by Moses. Any oil for anointing prepared by somebody other than Moses would not be forbidden on pain of this harsh penalty. The words "it will be holy," refer to such mixtures which would be prepared in the future. Unless such oil for anointing conformed to the exact measurements or weights as mentioned here, the user would not face any penalty. Had the Torah not written ממנו "from it," this would not have sufficed as I would have concluded that unless one smeared one's whole body with such oil one would not be guilty of the penalty threatened by the Torah.

Our sages in Keritut 6 derive from the wording of this verse that the oil for anointing had to be prepared in a holy area. If they would be right, the Torah should have written such a provision where it formulated the commandment not where it only threatened the penalty. We may therefore conclude that the sages in the Talmud do not really mean that their ruling has Biblical force; they only looked for some hint in the written text to drive home their point. Presumably, they had a tradition concerning this requirement to prepare the oil for anointing on holy ground. Our explanation follows the plain meaning of the text.

ממלח טהור קדוש. Salted, pure, holy. It appears that the meaning of "pure" refers to colours. The incense was to be of a uniform colour throughout. Seeing that it consisted of many different spices and a quantity sufficient for 368 portions of it was prepared at one time, it would most likely have had a mottled appearance unless the Torah had directed that it should be mixed in such a way that its spices would merge into a single uniform colour. Even though it possessed a uniform colour after having been thoroughly mixed, if someone examined it carefully he would notice that the uniformity was not due to all of its components being of the same colour. Such uniformity would not qualify for the definition "pure." The words: "salted, pure" mean therefore that it was to be so finely ground that even upon visual examination from close quarters its colour would appear to be uniform. This required expertise on the part of the people who pounded it into small particles.

והקטרת אשר תעשה, "And the incense which you are to make, etc." According to Keritut 6 the words: "you shall make," mean that Moses was to separate an amount needed for the daily incense offerings from the total on the day it would be used. This means that if an individual would compound an amount of incense of even half the daily portion offered on the altar, [the daily portion was divided into a half to be offered in the morning and the other half to be offered close to evening. Ed.] such an individual would be guilty of the most severe karet penalty; he would be cut off from his people (for all times).

לא תעשו, "you must not make it, etc." This means that even if the person making it had no intention of smelling the incense he had made he would still be guilty of a penalty though not the same penalty as if he had smelled the fragrance of the incense he had compounded. We derive this conclusion from the fact that the Karet penalty is mentioned in our portion only in verse 38 where the Torah speaks of someone smelling the incense.