The creation of the mishkan, the sanctuary in the wilderness that is the subject of this and last week's readings, involves a clear progression from fixed to fluid. Starting with the solid, gold-plated interior furnishings—the gilded ark, table, and candelabra—we move to the external structure, its wooden beams and broad fabrics and skins, and then on to the clothing of the priests and finally the ceremony of consecration and the sacrifices to be performed.

The movement is from inanimate to animate, from the basic and stationary to the sophisticated, movable, and human. The sanctuary is envisioned as a complete whole, bracketed by two verses about its ultimate purpose: at the beginning, "And you shall build me a tabernacle, and I shall dwell among them," and, at the end, "And I shall dwell among the children of Israel and I shall be for them a God."

But, after that closing verse, there comes another paragraph, the culmination of this week's reading, and it seems weirdly out of place. It's all about incense: the sweet-smelling offering served up by the priests around the clock. Suddenly, we also have a new piece of furniture: the square, gold-plated incense altar that is to be placed directly in front of the curtain separating the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies. And a new service: twice daily, Aaron and his sons are to replace the incense so that it will never stop burning, "a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations." Furthermore, the priests are warned never to meddle with the incense's formula, or to use the altar for anything else. Finally, the incense altar itself is called "most holy to the Lord"—a phrase not used for anything else outside the Holy of Holies.

The price of getting the incense wrong will become violently apparent when, in Leviticus, two of Aaron's four sons, Nadav and Avihu, bring a "strange fire" to God—understood to be an unauthorized form of the incense. They are instantly devoured by a divine fire even stranger than their own, as if they had not just broken God's law but triggered His deepest, most personal anger.

What is it about scent that sets it apart from the other manifestations of worship, and what does that difference tell us? The other priestly rites—the wearing of splendid garments, the slaying of animals, the sprinkling of blood, the baking of bread—are essentially pointed at ourselves and our own behavior, outward signs of the effort with which we strive to glorify God. Through the sacrifices we make and the clothes we wear, we bring the divine into contact with the human world—the world of sight and sound—and invite God to "dwell among us."

Incense, by contrast, is about the sense of smell, arguably the most powerful and most primal sense of all—the one that warns us of danger, triggers our instinctual love, our hunger, our violence, our respect and affection. In the pageantry of sacrifice, moreover, incense points not inward, toward ourselves, but upward. It is aimed at reaching God, as it were, in the most intimate way.

Indeed, throughout the Bible God responds personally and emotionally to scent. In Genesis, after surviving the Flood and descending from the ark, Noah brings a sacrifice whose scent triggers a change of divine heart: "And the Lord smelled the sweet scent; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake." In Leviticus, the "sweet scent" (reah nihoah) of the sacrifices emerges as their most striking quality. The prophet Ezekiel castigates Israel for bringing unauthorized sacrifices at altars where the "sweet scent" epitomizes the offensiveness of their idolatry.

Few religions are as this-worldly as the biblical one. And yet, beyond the mandate to bring goodness into the world, and beyond the formalities of religion itself, there is always the effort to go beyond the human, beyond mortality, to touch the divine, to affect Him intimately. These are not the greater part of religion, or even of worship, but they are the rarest moments that make the rest of it count.

Why is the incense set apart?  Because it's not about having God dwell with us. It's about our dwelling with Him.

David Hazony is author of The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life, recently published by Scribner.