Pastors' Wives circle 

“Give us a king to reign over us.” This was the petition of the children of Israel as they appealed to Samuel for a ruler like the nations around them had. The prophet tried in vain to dissuade them from their purpose. “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you; he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots…he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers” (I Samuel 8:11, 13).

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Nevertheless, all the arguments of Samuel were to no avail. A king the children of Israel wanted and a king they got. The words the prophet had spoken were soon proven true. The daughters of the land were conscripted to be perfumers and to learn the art of the apothecary. However, this may have proven to be a satisfying experience.

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The daughters of the land are yet perfumer. Women create environment and produce fragrance within their circumference. To be a perfumer to the king was considered a high honor. Fortunate, indeed, would be a young woman chosen to learn the ancient art passed along from generation to generation down through the centuries. Blending the anointing oils and compounding the incense would require materials from the uttermost parts of the earth. But more than that, it took the rare skills of highly trained apothecary. I liken “First Ladies” to perfumers chosen by God, our King of Kings, to produce the anointing that provides a fragrance to their ministry that others may enjoy. This fragrance is spread abroad.

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It takes a unique woman to walk in the position of a Pastors' wife, producing the perfect blend of aroma fit for God’s house. The Pastors' wife must possess unique skills to prepare the powders and blend the oils to obtain just the right fragrance to please the nostrils of the King.The task of the daughters of Israel in the court of King Saul was not an easy one. Historians tell us that much of the art of the perfumer which these young women acquired, was learned during the four hundred years the children of Israel spent in Egypt. Therefore, it is with Pastors' wives, they have experienced and will experience many trials in preparation for the art of the apothecary. In fact, the very word perfume means “through fire and smoke”. Only such torture will yield a quality of delight that otherwise would remain hidden forever. Thus, those whose lives have been subjected to extreme pressure or fiery trials often yield the sweetest fragrance.

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Perfumery traces its art to the beginning of civilization. The first perfumers were busy preparing fragrances for the gods of their various cultures and often the heathen priests were the apothecaries. In addition, they acted as physicians using their perfumes and ointment to heal the sick, but their methods were not always those that met with divine approval.

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A good perfumer would know at once the results of the blend of certain odors, just as an artist would know that by mixing blue and yellow he would get green. If a combined odor or a blended perfume were presented to an experienced perfumer, she would be able to detect the basic ingredients of that particular fragrance.

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God has gifted the Woman of God the ability to discern her surroundings. She knows and can detect any offensive or abnormal blend that has come to destroy the compound for worship, which God is requiring. It is interesting to note that a man with no sense of smell could not be accepted into the priesthood (Lev. 21:18); he had to be able to discern the odor of the perfume. How often do our efforts produce vile or offensive odor chiefly because we have not followed the divine formula or instructions?

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In Exodus 30:22-25, the perfumer listens very carefully to the instructions given by Moses. The formula must not vary. It was to be used as holy unto the Lord. For the holy oil, the apothecary begins with five hundred shekel, or more than two gallons of pure myrrh of the finest quality obtainable. In the lives of any anointed servant there must first come a season of myrrh to began to produce the fragrance for God’s house. This can be a crushing, pressuring, stressful experience.

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The myrrh that the Ishmaelite caravan carried down into Egypt (Genesis 37:25) was the product of a beautifully flowering rockrose. The soft, dark brown gum was often combed from the beards of goats that had been grazing where these plants grew (the sticky particles would adhere to the long hair of their beards as they grazed). At other times, during the heat of the day, young women would laboriously drag bunches of leather thongs over patch after patch of the rockrose, hoping the gum that oozed out of the broken plants would stick to the thong to be gathered later.

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Cinnamon for the holy oil had to be the choicest that the merchants could offer. Only the superior product from far away Ceylon, or its equal was acceptable. It must be sweet with not a trace of bitterness. For the oil, it must be from the inner bark of cinnamon tree, carefully selected, then beaten into a fine powder; two hundred and fifty shekels worth, almost nine pounds. This product was the delight of kings and the beautiful women of the court, so the selective buyer might well have waited for weeks, even months for cinnamon of the right quality to become available.

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So it is with this fragrance; to manifest itself in the lives of women highly used by God, you may experience bitterness in the inner chamber of your lives. You may sometimes feel beaten, crushed, or betrayed in order to become the “Fragrance of the House” and to release this aroma.

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Sweet Calamus presented no problem. It came from ginger grass that grew in abundance in Egypt. The women pull up huge quantities of it to obtain the roots, which they would weave into screens for their windows and verandas. When the grass was thoroughly dried by the hot desert sun, its fragrance seemed to improve producing a pleasant and sweet aroma. Beaten into small particles and mixed with an equal part of cinnamon, it produced a perfectly balanced, fragrant blend. Then the perfumer required five hundred shekels of cassia. This was a very popular product of the merchants from Tyrus (Ezek. 27:19). Men of those days used it freely to perfume their garments. Like cinnamon, it came from the bark of a tree. Long incisions were made in the tree trunk or branches. As the bark dried, it would peel off from the tree and roll itself into tubes of varying lengths and diameters. Huge bundles of these tubes were a part of the cargo of every caravan that passed through the land of Palestine. The cassia tubes were then beaten to a fine powder to blend well with other ingredients of the ointment.

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Thus, one by one, the various ingredients, each with its special fragrance, were brought together; now ready to be blended with pure olive oil that had been carefully kept in jars sealed with beeswax. The oil was obtained from the best fully ripened olives that had been beaten (Exodus 27:20, 21), then strained through a finely woven basket and allowed to settle until the oil could be decanted off in absolutely pure form to be stored in the ceramic containers. The residue, after the decanting could be used for cooking and lighting purposes.

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The scriptural record tells us that all the ingredients were blended together after the art of the perfumer. The ointment had to age before it could be used, giving the spices time to be thoroughly dispersed through the oil.

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Perfect blending is the goal of the perfumer. The holy anointing oil is the final product of the perfumer (Exodus 30:31). Moses was to anoint the tabernacle and all of its furnishings: the ark, the table and his vessels, the candlestick, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offerings, and the laver. In addition, Aaron and his sons were anointed and consecrated to minister unto the Lord in the priest’s office.

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God is raising up women in this hour to become the perfumers. The body of Christ will begin to acknowledge those who have toiled to produce the ointment that provides and anointed fragrance for their ministries.

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Who worked through the heat of the day to gather the myrrh? Who crossed the desert with the caravans bringing cinnamon from afar? Who were those women who washed the root of the calamus? Who traded with the merchants from Tyrus for cassia? Who beat the olives and decanted off the pure oil? Who blended it all together to produce the holy anointing oil? Not the priests or the kings, but the unsung laborers; silently working, their names unknown, praying warriors on bended knees, night and day; widows giving of their meager resources, helpers giving freely of their time and talents. They too will carry with them a fragrance, for who can handle all these ingredients without absorbing the odors to themselves? Together they compound a blend holy to the nostrils of God. We, therefore become “The Fragrance of the House”.

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Consider this, the Hebrew word for “rib” (tsalah) means a rib for the physical skeleton. In I Kings 6 and 7 there is a description of all the houses Solomon built, including the house of the Lord. Here the same word translated “rib” in the Genesis 2:22 is translated “beam” (I Kings 7:3). Hidden within the structures that Solomon built were beams (ribs) that supported them.

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These beams (ribs) were pillars of cedar wood. There are many references to cedar in the scriptures. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the cedars of Lebanon was its smell. They were full of sap; trees that the Lord had planted (Psalm 104:16). These trees yielded its fragrance day after day, night after night, unchanging with the passing of time.

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Beams and boards of cedar found their way into king’s palaces and even the temple of the Lord. The pillars of cedar may be upholding the place of worship (I Kings 7:2, 3; II Kings 19:23), but all the while they saturate that dwelling place with a fragrance that overcomes all others that have unpleasant associations. How wonderful to think that fragrance of our beings can fill the temple of God. There is something permanent, something continuous about the fragrance of cedar. The fragrance of cedar abides even when the tree is cut down and sawn into boards. Here is the picture of greatness bowing in weakness but yielding up its glory at the same time and imparting a fragrance that others may enjoy.

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No matter how magnificent a building looks from the outside, without the hidden (ribs) beams holding it up, it would collapse and fall to the ground as rubble. The world sees a man’s façade and the wisdom and strength he displays. However, the wife is the hidden beam (rib) who knows the little boy on the inside of him. She is the hidden support of his life. Other than the Lord, she is most important in his life. Without her, he is like a building without beams (ribs) to uphold it and his life and his ministry rest not only in his relationship with God, but in his relationship with her.

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I liken “First Ladies” to the Cedars of Lebanon. Summer and winter, in tropical heat or mountain cold the cedar gives up perfume for the garments of the king. She is planted by the Lord to bring forth fruit and provide shade to all who will come under the shelter of her branches. Her life is yielded to the Lord and she grows into a mighty cedar, for “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon” (Psalm 92:12). She upholds and supports, she is rooted, majestic, constant, unchanging and held in high esteem; not only for her vigor and beauty, but also for her fragrance and the lasting quality of her character.