Oil -- typically olive oil -- symbolizes the good that comes from celestial love. Celestial love is love of the Lord, the highest and purest love we can have. The good of celestial love is the desire to be good springing from celestial love: Wanting to do the Lord's will because you love Him. That's not a state many reach, even in heaven, but it's a beautiful goal. This representation makes sense based on the idea that the sun -- the source of all natural light and heat, and thus all natural life -- represents the Lord, the source of all spiritual light, heat and life. Burning oil was the most pure fire available in Biblical times, thus the closest representation of the sun people could create.

10259. 'Five hundred' means that which is complete. This is clear from what has been shown above in 10253. The reason why five hundred [shekels] of myrrh, 'according to the shekel of holiness', were taken, and five hundred of cassia, but only two hundred and fifty of sweet-smelling cinnamon and of sweet-smelling calamus, was that 'myrrh' was a sign of truth on the level of the senses, which is truth last and lowest in sequence, and 'cassia' a sign of truth that emanates directly from good, which is inmost truth, whereas 'sweet-smelling cinnamon' and 'sweet-smelling calamus' were signs of the inner levels of truth that are in between. Of the last and of the inmost there must be a complete amount, but of those in between a corresponding amount, for those in between must exist in a relationship in which they correspond to the first and the last.