Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - John 11:2 - 11:2
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And it was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair (ēn de Mariam hē aleipsasa ton kurion murōi kai ekmaxasa tous podas autou tais thrixin autēs). This description is added to make plainer who Mary is “whose brother Lazarus was sick” (hēs ho adelphos Lazaros ēsthenei). There is an evident proleptic allusion to the incident described by John in Joh 12:1-8 just after chapter 11. As John looks back from the end of the century it was all behind him, though the anointing (hē aleipsasa, first aorist active articular participle of aleiphō, old verb for which see Mar 6:13) took place after the events in chapter 11. The aorist participle is timeless and merely pictures the punctiliar act. The same remark applies to ekmaxasa, old verb ekmassō, to wipe off or away (Isa 12:3; Isa 13:5; Luk 7:38, Luk 7:44). Note the Aramaic form Mariam as usual in John, but Marias in Joh 11:1. When John wrote, it was as Jesus had foretold (Mat 26:13), for the fame of Mary of Bethany rested on the incident of the anointing of Jesus. The effort to link Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene and then both names with the sinful woman of Luk 7:36-50 is gratuitous and to my mind grotesque and cruel to the memory of both Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene. Bernard may be taken as a specimen: “The conclusion is inevitable that John (or his editor) regarded Mary of Bethany as the same person who is described by Luke as hamartōlos.” This critical and artistic heresy has already been discussed in Vol. 2 on Luke’s Gospel. Suffice it here to say that Luke introduces Mary Magdalene as an entirely new character in Joh 8:2 and that the details in Luk 7:36-50; Joh 12:1-8 have only superficial resemblances and serious disagreements. John is not here alluding to Luke’s record, but preparing for his own in chapter 12. What earthly difficulty is there in two different women under wholly different circumstances doing a similar act for utterly different purposes?