פּירוש אויף שמות 30:31

“This shall be an anointing oil sacred to Me” [30:31]. Bahya writes in the name of Ramban. The verse should have said that one should take the oil to anoint the priests and to smear with it in order to make holy. Why does the verse say, “this should be for Me” [30:31]? This means, God says that the oil should be for Me. The explanation is that they did not only anoint and smear the priests, but with it they also made holy the kings, like King David and other kings.⁷Bahya, Exodus, 30:31.

Afterwards, the Torah said to make spices for the incense. They took eleven kinds of good spices and made a smoke from it in the Tabernacle. Among the spices they took was galbanum, even though it smelled very bad. This was so that the Holy One should not embarrass the evildoers, when they repent and mix among the righteous through fasting and prayer. Our sages said: in a community that repents and there are no evildoers among them, this is not called a proper community. That is to say, the Holy One is praised when the evildoers repent and let themselves be counted among the righteous Israelites. When the evildoer is not among them, to repent, then the righteous one is punished, since all of Israel is responsible for each other. Therefore, also with the commandment of the lulav, we also take several willow branches, which have no smell and are not good to eat. This represents the evildoers who have nothing good about them. They have no Torah and have no commandments fulfilled. The others all have something good about them. The etrog is good to eat and smells nice. The myrtle smells nice and dates grow on the lulav. Just as we take everything together, this shows that the Holy One desires repentance from the evildoer.⁸Bahya, Exodus, 30:34.

לדרתיכם THROUGHOUT YOUR GENERATIONS — From here our Rabbis derived that it (the oil of anointment) was miraculously preserved in its entirety for the time to come (for the Messianic days) (Horayot 11b).

זה has the numerical value of 12, alluding to the 12 “logs” which was the measure for the oil of anointment (Horayot 11b; cf. Rashi v. 24).