FOREIGN, unauthorized, illegitimate — the old sense of 'strange' (alien, not-belonging), not the modern sense (odd, peculiar). Built on a root meaning 'to turn aside, to be a stranger,' the same family that gives 'stranger' and 'estrangement' in English. It first earns real discussion on this shelf as a warning: the incense altar may burn nothing but the one recipe Jehovah specified — 'you shall offer no strange incense on it' (Exodus 30:9, already on these pages), a rule with no penalty attached, just a boundary. ⚠ Leviticus 10:1 (already on these pages) pays that warning off in the worst possible way: Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's own eldest sons, offer 'strange fire' (esh zarah) before Jehovah — the identical adjective, now naming the transgression that kills them on their first working day as priests. One boundary word, stated once as an ordinary regulation and once as the line two men actually crossed. → first discussed at Exod 30:9