The Supper and the Anointing at Bethany Six Days before the Passover (Mr 14:3-9).

      The time of this part of the narrative is four days before what has just been related. Had it been part of the regular train of events which our Evangelist designed to record, he would probably have inserted it in its proper place, before the conspiracy of the Jewish authorities. But having come to the treason of Judas, he seems to have gone back upon this scene as what probably gave immediate occasion to the awful deed.

      3. And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman--It was "Mary," as we learn from Joh 12:3.
      having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard--pure nard, a celebrated aromatic--(See So 1:12).
      very precious--"very costly" (Joh 12:3).
      and she brake the box, and poured it on his head--"and anointed," adds John (Joh 12:3), "the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment." The only use of this was to refresh and exhilarate--a grateful compliment in the East, amid the closeness of a heated atmosphere, with many guests at a feast. Such was the form in which Mary's love to Christ, at so much cost to herself, poured itself out.

JFB.