“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “She has kept this perfume in preparation for the day of My burial.
7. Let her alone. When Christ bids them let Mary alone, he shows that they act improperly and unjustly who disturb their neighbors without a good reason, and raise a disturbance about nothing. Christ’s reply, as given by the other Evangelists, is longer; but the meaning is the same. The anointing, which Judas finds fault with, is defended on this ground, that it will serve for his burial.
In these verses we have, I. The kind visit our Lord Jesus paid to his friends at Bethany, Joh 12:1. He came up out of the country, six days before the passover, and took up at Bethany, a town which, according to the computation of our metropolis, lay so near Jerusalem as to be within the bills of mortality.
Commenting on John 12:1-11
Then said Jesus, let her alone,.... Do not disturb her in what she does, or hinder her, or blame her for it: against the day of my burial hath she kept this; this ointment, which she now poured on Christ; it was usual to embalm the dead with ointments and spices: Christ suggests, that the time of his death and burial were nigh, and that...