Mark 14:3

The Feast in Simon's House. The Anointing by Mary

3. And being in Bethany Meanwhile circumstances had occurred which in their result presented to the Jewish authorities a mode of apprehending Him which they had never anticipated. To relate these the Evangelist goes back to the evening before the Triumphal Entry, and places us in the house of

Simon the leper He had, we may believe, been a leper, and possibly had been restored by our Lord Himself. He was probably a near friend or relation of Lazarus. Some suppose he was his brother, others that he was the husband of Mary.

as he sat at meat We learn from St John that the sisters had made Him a feast, at which Martha served, while Lazarus reclined at the table as one of the guests (John 12:2).

there came a woman This was Mary the sister of Lazarus, full of grateful love to Him, who had poured back joy into her once desolated home.

having an alabaster box "hauynge a box of precious oynement spikanard," Wyclif. At Alabastron in Egypt there was a manufactory of small vases for holding perfumes, which were made from a stone found in the neighbouring mountains. The Greeks gave to these vases the name of the city from which they came, calling them alabastrons. This name was eventually extended to the stone of which they were formed; and at length the term alabasterwas applied without distinction to all perfume vessels, of whatever materials they consisted.

of ointment of spikenard Or, as in margin, of pure (genuine) nard or liquid nard. Pure or genuine seems to yield the best meaning, as opposed to the pseudo-nardus, for the spikenard was often adulterated. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xii. 26. It was drawn from an Indian plant, brought down in considerable quantities into the plains of India from such mountains as Shalma, Kedar Kanta, and others, at the foot of which flow the Ganges and Jumna rivers.

very precious It was the costliest anointing oil of antiquity, and was sold throughout the Roman Empire, where it fetched a price that put it beyond any but the wealthy. Mary had bought a vase or flask of it containing 12 ounces (John 12:3). Of the costliness of the ointment we may form some idea by remembering that it was among the gifts sent by Cambyses to the Ethiopians (Herod. iii. 20), and that Horace promises Virgil a whole cadus(36 quarts nearly) of wine, for a small onyx box of spikenard (Carm. iv. xii. 16, 17),

"Nardo vina merebere;

"Nardi parvus onyx eliciet cadum."

brake the box i. e. she broke the narrow neck of the small flask, and poured the perfume first on the head, and then on the feet of Jesus, drying them with the hair of her head. She did not wish to keep or hold back anything. She offered up all, gave away all, and her "all" was a tribute worthy of a king. "To anoint the feet of the greatest monarch was long unknown; and in all the pomps and greatnesses of the Roman prodigality, it was not used till Otho taught it to Nero." Jeremy Taylor's Life of Christ, iii. 13.