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Mary Anoints Jesus

12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus went to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom He had raised from the dead.(A) So they gave a supper for Him there. Martha was serving, and Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him. Then [a]Mary took a pound of very expensive perfume of pure [b]nard, and she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, the one who was going to betray Him, said, “Why was this perfume not sold for [c]three hundred denarii and [the money] given to the poor?” Now he said this, not because he cared about the poor [for he had never cared about them], but because he was a thief; and since he had the money box [serving as treasurer for the twelve disciples], he used to pilfer what was put into it. So Jesus said, “Let her alone, so that she may keep [the rest of] it for the day of My burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.”

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Footnotes

  1. John 12:3 There were two anointings of Jesus. This one in Bethany by Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Matt 26:7; Mark 14:3), and the other in the area of Galilee by an unnamed woman (Luke 7:37, 38).
  2. John 12:3 This was a thick, scented oil obtained from the root of a flowering plant grown in the Himalayas of Tibet and in the northern regions of India and Nepal.
  3. John 12:5 I.e. about a year’s wages for an ordinary workman.

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