Frankincense and Myrrh

Tomorrow we are teaching some kids about the Magi story. In order to do that we realized we needed to do our homework, gather props, etc. I assumed I knew what frankincense and myrrh were but I was a little off. Frankincense is a resin scrapped from trees in North Africa and made into a perfume. Myrrh is also a resin that is retrieved from trees in East Africa and is also used for incense and perfumes. For some reason I thought one of the gifts was a spice of some sort but I stand corrected. Jesus got gold and two different types of perfume. There are various theories as to why these three gifts and what they represented. Some point to gold and Jesus being king, frankincense was associated with worship, and myrrh was used by the Egyptians to embalm so it could point to his death. I am really not sure if that is on target. I will have to look at Davies and Allison’s ICC commentary when I get a chance and update this post.