Translation
Who is this coming up from the desert
Go to footnote numberlike columns of smoke,
Go to footnote numberlike the sacrificial burning of myrrh
Go to footnote numberand frankincense,
Go to footnote numberalong with all the spices
Go to footnote numberof the merchant?
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
Who is this coming out of hardships
surrounded by much prayer,
revived by communing with God,
the kind of
reviving desired by all?
Footnotes
1
The desert was consistently portrayed as the place of hardship and death.
2
A column of smoke is what was produced when someone burned incense. The other Hebrew memory of a column of smoke is how God lead them out of Egypt. They are actually related because prayer is one of the key ways in which we receive God’s guidance.
3
Myrrh, and other ointments were used for healing and reviving both the spirit and the body.
4
Both myrrh and frankincense can revive the spirit and the body, but when used as an incense offering, as they are here, they serve to highlight our connection to God.
5: “all the spices”
This is not implying that one could take any spice he had purchased from the merchants and add it to the incense oil; it is word pictures, and each picture stands for something deeper. Spices, like the oils, revive with their strong odors; they make you feel very much alive, alert, and engaged. So this is not about sacrificial regulations, but rather a layering of words that mean “reviving.”
6
Merchants sell things people want or they go out of business. In those days it caused a stir when merchants arrived from faraway places because they brought things that could not be obtained easily otherwise.