If the anointing oil was for people and vessels, the incense was for the air itself. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the command to Moses: take spices — balsam, onycha, galbanum — and pure frankincense, and compound them weight for weight (Exodus 30:34). Equal measure of each. No ingredient dominant. No ingredient shy.
Why equal weights?
The sages of the Talmud (Keritot 6a, c. 500 CE) noticed that the incense recipe differed from the anointing oil recipe in one striking way. The oil had staggered weights — five hundred, two hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty, five hundred. The incense had equal weights of its four named spices. Why?
They answered: the anointing oil marked hierarchy. It touched people and vessels, setting one apart from another, ranking priests above laymen, altar above courtyard. Different proportions of different spices matched the different degrees of sanctification the oil would confer.
The incense, by contrast, marked presence. It rose in a cloud that filled the whole sanctuary equally. Every corner of the Holy Place breathed the same fragrance at the same moment. So the spices had to be equal — because the cloud was equal, and the cloud was the point.
There is a famous rabbinic observation about one of the four: galbanum (chelbenah) smells bitter when burned alone. Yet the Torah commands that it be included. The sages drew the lesson: a holy community needs even those whose voices sound harsh on their own. Mix them in at equal weight with the fragrant ones, and the whole cloud rises sweet. Leave them out, and something essential is missing.
The Maggid takes it home: the cloud of a holy life is not made of fragrant voices alone. It is made of equal measures — and the bitter ones too, blended in the right way, become part of the sweetness.