Matthew 26:10

When Jesus understood it The murmurings had been whispered at first. St Mark says, "had indignation within themselves, and said, &c."

a good work Rather, a noble and beautiful work, denoting a delicate and refined, almost artistic, sense of the fitness of things, which was lacking to the blunter perception of the rest.

The Lord passes a higher commendation on this than on any other act recorded in the N.T.; it implied a faith that enabled Mary to see, as no else then did, the truth of the Kingdom. She saw that Jesus was still a King, though destined to die. The same thought the certainty of the death of Jesus that estranged Judas made her devotion more intense.