Three Wise Men from the East. Part of the mosaic on the left wall of the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare-Nuovo. Ravenna, Italy; image from Wikimedia Commons
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Editor’s Note: Campbell Markham is pastor of Scots’ Presbyterian Church in Fremantle, Western Australia.
On the night before Christmas, growing up, we put out empty pillowcases next to our beds. In the morning they would be filled to bursting with presents.
Once, I mistimed my Christmas morning wake-up. I could feel at the end of the bed that the bag was full, but not even the birds were awake. Reclaiming sleep was hopeless, and the next hour or two of waiting in the quiet darkness was a bit torturous.
Perth Christmas mornings were invariably cool and clear-skied, with the promise of much swimming in the pool later on. We would take our bulging pillowcases into the living room, and then began the heaven of extracting and unwrapping one perfectly wrapped gift after another.
Our parents’ amazing generosity did not however prevent us from inwardly assessing present quality. What separated the sheep from the goats was the hardness of the wrapped gift. To put it bluntly, a solid gift rated high, a soft gift rated low. Hard gifts were likely to be a toy—for example, a Star Wars blaster, board game, or something electronic like a Walkman (if you’re under 38, ask someone older). Soft gifts were likely to be clothes. Nothing is less interesting than clothes.
The Magi presented three gifts to the child Jesus in Bethlehem.
Yet, what about the gifts that were given at the first Christmas—the three presents of the Magi presented to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem?
Matthew alone tells us the story:
After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. (Matt. 2:9-12)
We don’t know how long after Jesus’ birth this happened. Given that King Herod, just after the Magi’s visit, tried to kill Jesus by ordering the death of all boys in Bethlehem aged two years and younger, it may have been anytime within two years of his birth.
Who were the “wise men” in Matthew 2:1-12?
A magos was a pagan wise man, priest, and/or astrologer. “Magic” and “magician” come from magos. Magi is the plural, and coming from the east and following a star, these were probably Persian astrologers.
Our Christmas cards’ assumption that there were three Magi rests on the giving of three gifts. From Matthew, though, we learn only that there were more than one. The traditional names, Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior, were fabricated about five centuries after Jesus’ birth.
We know for an historical certainty, however, what the Magi did when they finally found the baby Jesus. They “fell down and worshiped him.” The word “worship” typically described prostration before a king, to kiss the hem of his robe. The Magi fell on their faces before the baby Jesus in awful respect.
The magi “fell down and worshiped him.”
Many have dismissed the story of the Magi’s visit, “What Persian wise man would come to honor the birth of a Jewish peasant?” The strangeness of their worship points to the greatness of the baby.
These travelers, who would have been very rich to have made such a long journey and were no doubt highly honored in their own land, saw in the baby Jesus someone of cosmically greater honor and glory.
And the fact that non-Jewish pagan religious leaders came to worship Christ shouts out that the Savior came to rescue not just Jews but people from every tribe, nation, and tongue. So some thirty years later the same Jesus would command his followers to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
We must also contrast the pagan Magi with Herod the Great, the putative “King of the Jews.” As a Jewish leader, Herod should have led his people in honoring the birth of the Lord’s Anointed. Instead he tried to murder him, and it was left to others to honor him. This prefigures what the Gospels lay out from start to end, the rejection of Jesus by Israel and his intention, born in Genesis 12:1-3, to take his salvation blessings beyond the borders of Israel to all nations.
Let’s now look at the significance of those first “Christmas gifts.”
Gold is a rare and precious metal. As I write, it costs almost $70,000 per kilo. Gold has always be immensely valuable, and until we get to heaven and tramp on it like bitumen, it always will be counted as immensely valuable.
Frankincense, from an old French word meaning “pure incense,” is the dried sap of the Boswellia sacra tree, native to the Horn of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula. Small holes are chiseled into the bark, and the sap seeps out in little tears, which are collected when they dry. Frankincense “is bitter in flavor and has a strong balsamic odor when heated” (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 360). The Egyptians used it for embalming. In the ancient near east Kings were commonly anointed with frankincense ointment, which was particularly expensive.
In the desert God commanded Moses to make a sacred ointment with this rare aromatic:
The Lord said to Moses, “Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy.” (Exod. 30:34-35)
Myrrh likewise is dried sap, in this case from the Commiphora myrrha, “a low thorny tree” (ISBE, p. 450), which grows in the same places as frankincense. Myrrh is used in perfumes and cosmetics and was one the ingredients in the sacred anointing oil used to consecrate Old Testament priests (Exod. 30:23-25).
Just before Jesus was nailed to the cross, “they” (was it the soldiers, or the women who followed Jesus to Golgotha?) offered him “wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.” (Mark 15:23; the concoction may have been a kind of primitive anesthetic.) After Jesus’ death John reports that Nicodemus “came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight” (John 19:39), and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus “took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (John 19:40).
The myrrh was intended to slow and mask the odor of decomposition, and its application indicates that Jesus’ followers did not expect an imminent resurrection. Myrrh, then, is closely identified with Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh also appear in the list of luxury goods in Revelation 18.
In Revelation 18:12-13, gold, frankincense, and myrrh appear in the list of luxury goods that the “merchants of the earth weep and mourn” over, because after God’s judgment upon Babylon no one will care about them anymore. This testifies to the great value of these items in the present world.
Moreover, the Queen of Sheba gave King Solomon “120 talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones. Never again came such an abundance of spices as these that the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon” (1Kings 10:10). Psalm 72 uses this as a picture of the ultimate tribute that will be given to the Lord’s Anointed:
The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him; the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him (verses 10-11).
With those gifts the Queen honored Solomon as a great King, and with their worship and costly royal gifts the Magi honored Jesus as their great Sovereign and King. They showed him to be the fulfillment of Psalm 72.
The Magi’s presents pointed forward to Jesus’ great high-priestly work.
The early church Fathers tended to attach allegorical meaning to each gift: gold for Jesus’ royalty, frankincense for his divinity, myrrh for his humanity. Certainly Jesus is all of these things.
Modern scholars, however, tend to discourage looking for individual significance, saying that it is the general “character of the gifts which is the impressive thing, not the potential use.” Alfred Edersheim, for example says that the Magi’s homage was “the first and typical acknowledgement of Christ by those who hitherto had been ‘far off;’ and their offerings as symbolic of the world’s tribute” (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. 1, p. 190).
May the Magi’s gifts remind us this year of God’s gift of His Son.
I agree in the main, but the close Old Testament association of frankincense with the priests, and the close Gospel association of myrrh with Jesus’ death and burial, tells me that the Magi’s presents were not any old precious and expensive gifts but rather pointed forward to Jesus’ great high-priestly work, the offering up of himself as a sacrifice for the sins of all of his people from every corner of the globe.
May the Magi’s gifts remind us this year of God’s gift of His Son, the Great King who was given as a sacrifice for the world, “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
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