Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - John 12:3 - 12:3
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
3. λίτραν. S. John alone gives Mary’s name and the amount. The pound of 12 ounces is meant. So large a quantity of a substance so costly is evidence of her overflowing love. Comp. Joh 19:39.
νάρδου πιστικῆς. The expression is a rare one, and occurs elsewhere only Mar 14:3, which S. John very likely had seen: his account has all the independence of that of an eyewitness, but may have been influenced by the Synoptic narratives. The meaning of the Greek is not certain: it may mean (1) ‘genuine nard’ (πίστις), and spikenard was often adulterated; or (2) ‘drinkable, liquid nard’ (πίνω), and unguents were sometimes drunk; or (3) ‘Pistic nard,’ ‘Pistic’ being supposed to be a local adjective. But no place from which such an adjective could come appears to be known. Of the other two explanations the first is to be preferred. The English ‘spikenard’ seems to recall the nardi spicati of the Vulgate in Mar 14:3 : here the Vulgate has nardi pistici. Winer, p. 121.
πολυτίμου. Horace offers to give a cask of wine for a very small box of it; Nardi parvus onyx eliciet cadum (Carm. IV. xii. 17).
τοὺς πόδας. The two Synoptists mention only the usual (Psa 23:5) anointing of the head; S. John records the less usual act, which again is evidence of Mary’s devotion. The rest of this verse is peculiar to S. John, and shews that he was present. Note the emphatic repetition of τοὺς πόδας. To unbind the hair in public was a disgrace to a Jewish woman; but Mary makes this sacrifice also. In ἐκ τ. ὀσμῆς the ἐκ expresses that out of which the filling was produced: comp. LXX. in Psa 127:5; ὃς πληρώσει τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν αὐτοῦ ἐξ αὐτῶν.