המשוח בשמן

The name is not a title of glory. It is a description of a procedure. Mashiach — anointed. Oil was poured on the head, and from that moment the man was king.

Why oil

Kabbalah and Chassidus read the physical properties of oil as a precise analogue for pnimiyus — interiority, the concealed dimension of a thing.

Oil rises. Poured into any other liquid it separates and floats to the top, no matter how it is mixed. It does not blend, and it does not fight; it simply ends up above. So too the innermost dimension of Torah and of the soul: it is not one component among others, and it cannot be argued down to the level of the rest.

Oil penetrates. Poured on cloth or parchment it does not sit on the surface; it travels into the fibres and cannot be separated out again. What has been anointed is not coated. It is changed through.

Oil is hidden. It exists inside the olive, invisible, and is released only by crushing. The essence does not present itself; it is extracted, and extraction is not gentle.

Anointing as a theory of authority

Put the three properties together and you have a theory of Messianic kingship. The authority rises above every other authority — not by defeating them, but by being of a different order. It permeates rather than sits on top: a king who has been anointed is not wearing an office, he has been altered by it. And it comes from a concealed place, released under pressure, which is why the tradition associates the Messianic capacity with the eras that crushed the people hardest.

There is a further consequence. Because oil is interiority, anointing is the one form of appointment that cannot be faked from outside. Crowns can be seized. Armies can be assembled. Reputation can be manufactured. Oil is a claim about what is inside the vessel, and it is tested only by what eventually comes out of it — which returns us, exactly, to Rambam’s insistence on accomplishment over spectacle.