Gold, Frankincense And Myrrh: A View Through The Song Of Songs

Solemnity of the Epiphany 2026

Gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh are brought to Mary and Jesus, the newborn king of the Jews. Lots of ink has been poured out trying to help Christians understand the mystery of the Incarnation revealed in these costly presents. Most popularly, gold is a gift for a royal crown, incense a gift for a princely priest, myrrh for the God-man who will be sacrificed for our sins on a cross.

(But, of course, you would not expect the God-man to stay in the tomb. He is risen from the dead and wants to redeem us from death as well.)

Some commentators claim that the gifts would be used by St. Joseph to facilitate the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt and help them get established there while they awaited the usurper King Herod’s death.

We cannot overlook, though, the fact that in this story of the visit of the three Magi, there are at least two references to the prophecies contained in the OT. Jesus, and all of the Christian story we see in the NT, is the fulfillment of the promises to Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses and David made over three thousand years and chronicled in the Hebrew Bible. Let’s look in the OT for a book that speaks of gold, incense and myrrh, one that would have been familiar to both Jew and Christian. And it’s a book right in the middle of our Bible, the Song of Songs, some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. In chapter 1, Bridegroom promises his fiancé “ornaments of gold, studded with silver.” In chapter 4 he sees her as a beautiful garden, “an orchard of pomegranates with the choicest of fruits, with henna and nard, with nard and saffron, with calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of frankincense tree, with myrrh and aloes, with all the finest spices.”

The Song of Songs is like a sweet onion. There are layers of meaning in the book. On one level, it is a love song between a man and a woman. Moreover, since a garden features prominently in it, the book could be the love song between Adam and Eve when the first man meets the first woman, and says something like “Wow, God. Look what You did!”

On a higher level, it can be seen as a love song written by King Solomon, David’s son, for one of his wives. In fact, the book is formally named “Song of Solomon.” Multiple wives got old Solomon into heaps of trouble later on but we can envision him with his first wife, reveling in her beauty as she revels in his majesty and strength. Solomon was the king who built the Jerusalem Temple, center of Jewish worship for centuries.

But on the highest level, we can see with the Fathers of the Church, the author of the Book of Revelation and St. Paul that the Song of Songs is the love song between Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and His Bride, the Church. The great Spanish mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila rhapsodized over the imagery.

In fact, one of the best ways to look at the holy Bible is to see it as a symphony, beginning with the marriage of Adam and Eve before the Fall, ending in a garden-city with the union of the Risen Lamb to the Church in the Book of Revelation at the general Resurrection, and with the Song of Songs as the central movement and climax of the masterwork we call the Scriptures.

Let’s now look at the readings that lead up to the story of the Magi, the Blessed Virgin, and the infant Jesus found in the Gospel.

Our reading from Isaiah comes from chapter 60, close to the end of his prophecy. Just six chapters earlier the prophet has compared Israel to an “abandoned widow,” left that way by God because of her pursuit of false gods and obscene rituals. But here, Isaiah sees her rising in splendor, with her children redeemed from exile in foreign lands returning to her and making her radiant with joy. He sees her as a fertile mother with the wealth of nations flowing into her treasuries, with camels carrying gold and frankincense, and their gentile drivers praising the Lord, the true God. This is probably the vision that inspires artists to include camels in their depiction of Christmas. It reminds us that if we want the glory promised to us by Christ, we need to exhibit the obedience of faith in our daily behavior.

Our psalm looks to that day when every nation on earth will adore the Lord Jesus in His holy family. He, the Son of God, is the crown prince of the universe, ruling His people in true justice. We, too, must dedicate ourselves to bringing about justice in our world, especially in our care for the poor and marginalized. We need to be the hand of Christ giving aid to all in need.