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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - John 12:7 - 12:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this (ἄφες αὐτήν εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ)
This passage presents great difficulty. According to the reading just given, the meaning is that Mary had kept the ointment, perhaps out of the store provided for Lazarus' burial, against the day of Christ's preparation for the tomb. The word ἐνταφιασμοῦ is wrongly rendered burial. It means the preparation for burial, the laying out, or embalmment. It is explained by Joh 19:40, as the binding in linen cloths with spices, “as the manner of the Jews is ἐνταφιάζειν to prepare for burial,” not to bury. It is the Latin pollingere, to wash and prepare a corpse for the funeral pile. Hence the name of the servant to whom this duty was committed was pollinctor. He was a slave of the libitinarius, or furnishing undertaker. Mary, then, has kept the ointment in order to embalm Jesus with it on this day, as though He were already dead. This is the sense of the Synoptists. Matthew (Mat 26:12) says, she did it with reference to my preparation for burial. Mark, she anticipated to anoint.
The reading of the Received Text is, however, disputed. The best textual critics agree that the perfect, τετήρηκεν, she hath kept, was substituted for the original reading τηρήσῃ, the aorist, she may keep, or may have kept, by some one who was trying to bring the text into harmony with Mar 14:8; not understanding how she could keep for His burial that which she poured out now. Some, however, urge the exact contrary, namely, that the perfect is the original reading, and that the aorist is a correction by critics who were occupied with the notion that no man is embalmed before his death, or who failed to see how the ointment could have been kept already, as it might naturally be supposed to have been just purchased. (So Godet and Field.)
According to the corrected reading, ἵνα, in order that, is inserted after ἄφες αὐτὴν, let her alone, or suffer her; τετήρηκεν, hath kept, is changed to τηρήσῃ, may keep, and the whole is rendered, suffer her to keep it against the day of my burying. So Rev.
But it is difficult to see why Christ should desire to have kept for His embalmment what had already been poured out upon Him. Some, as Meyer, assume that only a part of the ointment was poured out, and refer αὐτό, it, to the part remaining. “Let her alone, that she may not give away to the poor this ointment, of which she has just used a portion for the anointing of my feet, but preserve it for the day of my embalmming.” Canon Westcott inclines to this view of the use of only a part. But the inference from the synoptic narratives can be only that the whole contents of the flask were used, and the mention of the pound by John, and the charge of waste are to the same effect. There is nothing whatever to warrant a contrary supposition.
Others explain, suffer her to have kept it, or suffer that she may have kept it. So Westcott, who says: “The idiom by which a speaker throws himself into the past, and regards what is done as still a purpose, is common to all languages.”
Others, again, retain the meaning let her alone, and render ἵνα, in order that, with an ellipsis, thus: “Let her alone: (she hath not sold her treasure) in order that she might keep it,” etc.
The old rendering, as A.V., is the simplest, and gives a perfectly intelligible and consistent sense. If, however, this must be rejected, it seems, on the whole, best to adopt the marginal reading of the Rev., with the elliptical ἵνα: let her alone: it was that she might keep it. This preserves the prohibitory force of ἄφες αὐτήν, which is implied in Mat 26:10, and is unquestionable in Mar 14:6. Compare Mat 15:14; Mat 19:14; Mat 27:49.
Note that the promise of the future repute of this act (Mat 26:13; Mar 14:9) is omitted by the only Evangelist who records Mary's name in connection with it.