To anoint someone is to pour oil on their head, marking them out for God's service or protection.
In the Old Testament, anointing translates the Hebrew verb mashach: oil poured or smeared on a person or object to set it apart for God. Kings, priests, and sometimes prophets were anointed this way, and the sacred oil for the tabernacle and its furnishings was made from a specific recipe. The noun mashiach, 'anointed one,' gives us the word messiah.
The New Testament uses two different Greek words that English merges into one. Chrio is reserved for the weighty sense: Jesus as the Anointed One (Christ), or the Spirit's anointing of believers. Aleipho is the ordinary word for rubbing on oil—for the sick, for guests, for burial. English 'anoint' hides which one is in view.
Prepare from these a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer; it will be a sacred anointing oil.
The recipe for the sacred anointing oil used to consecrate the tabernacle and its priests.
So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.
Samuel anoints David king, and the Spirit rushes on him the same moment.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed,
Jesus applies Isaiah's messianic anointing to himself, using the weighty Greek verb chrio.
Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.
Elders anoint the sick with ordinary oil, a different, everyday Greek word from Luke's.
Most English versions render both chrio and aleipho as 'anoint' or 'anointed,' so Luke 4:18 ('he has anointed me') and James 5:14 ('anointing him with oil') look identical in English though they use different Greek words carrying different weight. A few versions vary the phrasing slightly, but the underlying distinction between messianic anointing and everyday oil rarely survives into English.
Because Christ means 'Anointed One,' people sometimes assume every biblical use of 'anointing' carries the same charged, Spirit-empowered sense—so James 5:14's oil for the sick gets treated as a miracle formula. But that verse uses aleipho, the plain word for rubbing on oil, not chrio. The weight in that passage lies in the prayer of faith, not in special power packed into the oil.
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