John 11:2 Commentary and Bible Study

The apostle John in this Gospel clarifies: ‘It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment.’ Now there are two women who are recorded to have done that, who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with the hair of their head, and it is not the one in Luke’s Gospel, early on in chapter seven. An unnamed woman does that, a woman who was a sinner, a conspicuous sinner, comes in and does that. That took place in the house of a man who is named in the narrative of Luke as Simon the Pharisee. So it was not Mary, the sister of Martha but someone else.Rather later, two chapters later in Luke, another anointing is recorded, that occurred just six days before the Passover, before the end of Christ’s earthly journey and his crucifixion. That is the one John describes. Now it is recorded in the other Gospels without a name. John alone provides the name. And just a chapter later, he is going to tell us about the event also. Well, ‘it was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment.’ It has not actually happened yet in John’s Gospel, but of course, John’s readers know about it because they already have the other Gospels. The Gospel of John was the last to be written. So he is able to speak in the past tense, but strictly it will follow in chapter 12.