ointment

147:5.3On this par­tic­u­lar oc­ca­sion at Si­mon’s house, among those who came in off the street was a woman of un­sa­vory rep­u­ta­tion who had re­cently be­come a be­liever in the good news of the gospel of the king­dom. This woman was well known through­out all Je­ru­sa­lem as the for­mer keeper of one of the so-called high-class broth­els lo­cated hard by the tem­ple court of the gen­tiles. She had, on ac­cept­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus, closed up her ne­far­i­ous place of busi­ness and had in­duced the ma­jor­ity of the women as­so­ci­ated with her to ac­cept the gospel and change their mode of liv­ing; not­with­stand­ing this, she was still held in great dis­dain by the Phar­isees and was com­pelled to wear her hair down—the badge of har­lotry. This un­named woman had brought with her a large flask of per­fumed anoint­ing lo­tion and, stand­ing be­hind Je­sus as he re­clined at meat, be­gan to anoint his feet while she also wet his feet with her tears of grat­i­tude, wip­ing them with the hair of her head. And when she had fin­ished this anoint­ing, she con­tin­ued weep­ing and kiss­ing his feet.

188:1.4They car­ried the body into the tomb, a cham­ber about ten feet square, where they hur­riedly pre­pared it for burial. The Jews did not re­ally bury their dead; they ac­tu­ally em­balmed them. Joseph and Nicode­mus had brought with them large quan­ti­ties of myrrh and aloes, and they now wrapped the body with ban­dages sat­u­rated with these so­lu­tions. When the em­balm­ing was com­pleted, they tied a nap­kin about the face, wrapped the body in a linen sheet, and rev­er­ently placed it on a shelf in the tomb.

188:1.7While all this was go­ing on, the women were hid­ing near at hand so that they saw it all and ob­served where the Mas­ter had been laid. They thus se­creted them­selves be­cause it was not per­mis­si­ble for women to as­so­ciate with men at such a time. These women did not think Je­sus had been prop­erly pre­pared for burial, and they agreed among them­selves to go back to the home of Joseph, rest over the Sab­bath, make ready spices and oint­ments, and re­turn on Sun­day morn­ing prop­erly to pre­pare the Mas­ter’s body for the death rest. The women who thus tar­ried by the tomb on this Fri­day evening were: Mary Mag­da­lene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Martha an­other sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, and Re­becca of Sep­pho­ris.

189:4.3A lit­tle be­fore three o’clock this Sun­day morn­ing, when the first signs of day be­gan to ap­pear in the east, five of the women started out for the tomb of Je­sus. They had pre­pared an abun­dance of spe­cial em­balm­ing lo­tions, and they car­ried many linen ban­dages with them. It was their pur­pose more thor­oughly to give the body of Je­sus its death anoint­ing and more care­fully to wrap it up with the new ban­dages.

189:4.5It was about half past three o’clock when the five women, laden with their oint­ments, ar­rived be­fore the empty tomb. As they passed out of the Da­mas­cus gate, they en­coun­tered a num­ber of sol­diers flee­ing into the city more or less panic-stricken, and this caused them to pause for a few min­utes; but when noth­ing more de­vel­oped, they re­sumed their jour­ney.

139:12.10But these wicked and dan­ger­ous ideas did not take def­i­nite shape un­til the day when a grate­ful woman broke an ex­pen­sive box of in­cense at Je­sus’ feet. This seemed waste­ful to Ju­das, and when his pub­lic protest was so sweep­ingly dis­al­lowed by Je­sus right there in the hear­ing of all, it was too much. That event de­ter­mined the mo­bi­liza­tion of all the ac­cu­mu­lated hate, hurt, mal­ice, prej­u­dice, jeal­ousy, and re­venge of a life­time, and he made up his mind to get even with he knew not whom; but he crys­tal­lized all the evil of his na­ture upon the one in­no­cent per­son in all the sor­did drama of his un­for­tu­nate life just be­cause Je­sus hap­pened to be the chief ac­tor in the episode which marked his pass­ing from the pro­gres­sive king­dom of light into that self-cho­sen do­main of dark­ness.

172:1.5Noth­ing out of the or­di­nary hap­pened un­til near the close of the feast­ing when Mary the sis­ter of Laz­a­rus stepped for­ward from among the group of women on­look­ers and, go­ing up to where Je­sus re­clined as the guest of honor, pro­ceeded to open a large al­abaster cruse of very rare and costly oint­ment; and af­ter anoint­ing the Mas­ter’s head, she be­gan to pour it upon his feet as she took down her hair and wiped them with it. The whole house be­came filled with the odor of the oint­ment, and ev­ery­body pres­ent was amazed at what Mary had done. Laz­a­rus said noth­ing, but when some of the peo­ple mur­mured, show­ing in­dig­na­tion that so costly an oint­ment should be thus used, Ju­das Is­car­iot stepped over to where An­drew re­clined and said: “Why was this oint­ment not sold and the money be­stowed to feed the poor? You should speak to the Mas­ter that he re­buke such waste.”

172:1.6Je­sus, know­ing what they thought and hear­ing what they said, put his hand upon Mary’s head as she knelt by his side and, with a kindly ex­pres­sion upon his face, said: “Let her alone, ev­ery one of you. Why do you trou­ble her about this, see­ing that she has done a good thing in her heart? To you who mur­mur and say that this oint­ment should have been sold and the money given to the poor, let me say that you have the poor al­ways with you so that you may min­is­ter to them at any time it seems good to you; but I shall not al­ways be with you; I go soon to my Fa­ther. This woman has long saved this oint­ment for my body at its burial, and now that it has seemed good to her to make this anoint­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion of my death, she shall not be de­nied such sat­is­fac­tion. In the do­ing of this, Mary has re­proved all of you in that by this act she evinces faith in what I have said about my death and as­cen­sion to my Fa­ther in heaven. This woman shall not be re­proved for that which she has this night done; rather do I say to you that in the ages to come, wher­ever this gospel shall be preached through­out the whole world, what she has done will be spo­ken of in mem­ory of her.”

172:1.7It was be­cause of this re­buke, which he took as a per­sonal re­proof, that Ju­das Is­car­iot fi­nally made up his mind to seek re­venge for his hurt feel­ings. Many times had he en­ter­tained such ideas sub­con­sciously, but now he dared to think such wicked thoughts in his open and con­scious mind. And many oth­ers en­cour­aged him in this at­ti­tude since the cost of this oint­ment was a sum equal to the earn­ings of one man for one year—enough to pro­vide bread for five thou­sand per­sons. But Mary loved Je­sus; she had pro­vided this pre­cious oint­ment with which to em­balm his body in death, for she be­lieved his words when he fore­warned them that he must die, and it was not to be de­nied her if she changed her mind and chose to be­stow this of­fer­ing upon the Mas­ter while he yet lived.

172:1.8Both Laz­a­rus and Martha knew that Mary had long saved the money where­with to buy this cruse of spike­nard, and they heart­ily ap­proved of her do­ing as her heart de­sired in such a mat­ter, for they were well-to-do and could eas­ily af­ford to make such an of­fer­ing.