Is it right to use perfume?

Exodus 30 does not forbid perfume in general. It forbids copying one blend, the holy incense, made of stacte, onycha, galbanum and frankincense in equal weights and burned before the Lord in the tabernacle (30:34-36). That recipe was “holy for the Lord”, and no one was to make it “to smell thereto” for his own pleasure (30:37-38). The holy anointing oil had the same rule (30:31-33). What God set apart for his worship was not to become an ordinary household scent. Gill explains the ban as making it ‘for their own use, for the scenting of their rooms’. Other perfumes are not in view; the incense itself was made “after the art of the apothecary” (30:35), a perfumer’s trade that Israel plainly had.

The other warnings are about what perfume was used for. In Proverbs 7 the scented bed is part of an adulteress’s seduction (7:17-18); the sin is adultery, not myrrh. In Isaiah 3 God judges the pride of Jerusalem’s women, who walked “with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes” (3:16), and their perfumes are among the luxuries that would be taken from them (3:24). In Isaiah 57:9 perfumes are gifts carried to a pagan king or god, Molech in the BSB. Good things can be made to serve pride, lust or idolatry.

Elsewhere Scripture speaks of perfume with approval. “Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart” (Proverbs 27:9). Esther’s preparation, “six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odours” (Esther 2:12), is told without blame, and when a sinful woman anointed Jesus’ feet he took it as a sign of her love (Luke 7:37-38, 47). The bridegroom’s ointments are praised in the Song of Songs (1:3), and Jesus told those who fast to “anoint thine head” (Matthew 6:17). When Mary anointed his feet, so that “the house was filled with the odour of the ointment” (John 12:3), he answered her critics, “Let her alone” (12:7). The Bible’s teaching is consistent: perfume is a gift to be enjoyed, the sacred incense belonged to God alone, and no gift is to be used for sin.