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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 26:11 - 26:11
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Mat_26:11 f. Justification of the καλόν on the ground of the peculiar circumstances under which the anointing took place. Jesus was on the very threshold of death; they would always have opportunities of showing kindness to the poor, but by and by it would be no longer in their power to do a loving service to Him in person upon earth! Accordingly there is a moral propriety in making the special manifestation of love, which was possible only now, take precedence of that general one which was always possible.
οὐ πάντοτε ἔχετε ] a sorrowful litotes involving the idea: but I will soon be removed by death, to which idea the γάρ of Mat_26:12 refers.
βαλοῦσα ] inasmuch as she has poured … she has done it (this outpouring) with the view (as though I were already a corpse) of embalming me (Gen_50:2). The aorist participle represents the act as finished contemporaneously with ἐποίησαν . Comp. Mat_27:4; Eph_1:9, al.; Hermann, ad Viger. p. 774; Müller in the Luther. Zeitschr. 1872, p. 631 ff. For the rest, it may be said that, under the influence of grateful emotion, Jesus ascribes a special motive to the woman, though she herself simply meant to testify her love and reverence. Such feelings, intensified as they were by the thought of the approaching death of the beloved Master, and struggling to express themselves in this particular form, could not but receive the highest consecration.