The recipe for the holy anointing oil is exact and extravagant: five hundred minas of myrrh, two hundred and fifty of sweet cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of sweet calamus, five hundred of cassia — all in the shekel of the sanctuary — and then olive oil. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a detail the Hebrew leaves numeric and cold: twelve logas of olive oil, a loga for each tribe of the twelve tribes (Exodus 30:24).
Why was the oil tribe-weighted?
This targumic expansion transforms the anointing oil from a temple commodity into a covenantal act. The oil was not simply enough oil to complete the blending. It was exactly twelve measures, one drawn in the name of every tribe — Reuben's measure, Simeon's, Levi's, Judah's, and on through Benjamin. When Moses poured the oil on Aaron's head, the oil of every tribe flowed down together. When he anointed the altar, the altar received the oil of every tribe at once.
The sages read this as a quiet but radical claim. The priesthood belonged to Aaron and his sons — drawn from the tribe of Levi alone. But the oil of their anointing belonged to all Israel. The priests were Levite by birth, but national by sanctification. No single tribe could own the consecration of its own worship. Every tribe had to pour its log into the mixture, or the priest was not truly the priest of Israel.
The spices, meanwhile, were fragrance — myrrh for preservation, cinnamon and calamus for sweetness, cassia for strength. The recipe came down from Moses exactly, and the midrashim preserve the tradition that duplicating it for personal use was a capital sin (Keritot 5a). This was the oil of the people. No one got to copy it for themselves.
The Maggid learns: true consecration takes oil from every tribe.