She gave him a YEARS WAGES - John 12 - Why Mary Wiped Jesus' Feet With Her Hair

Three hundred denarii was about a year's wages for a working man in Judea, and six days before the Passover, Mary of Bethany poured that much perfume over the feet of Jesus in a single evening. Then she let down her hair and wiped his feet with it. Within days, one man at that same table would sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. In this video we walk slowly through John 12:1-8. What a "pound of pure nard" actually was and what it cost. Why letting down her hair would have stopped the room — and what the Mishnah and the book of Numbers say about unbound hair. Whether the woman of Luke 7, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene were really one person, and how a sermon preached in Rome in the year 591 reshaped this woman's reputation for fourteen centuries. We also look at the line that has been misused for centuries — "the poor always ye have with you" — and the verse in Deuteronomy 15 Jesus was quoting. Then we follow the rare Greek verb John uses for "wiped" (ekmassō) into the very next chapter, where Jesus kneels with a towel. And we set Mary's three hundred denarii beside Judas's thirty pieces of silver — the price of a slave in the law of Moses. If you've ever given something to God that someone else called a waste, this one is for you. ⏱ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 A year's wages poured out in one evening 7:26 One woman or three? The sermon of 591 9:39 Why letting down her hair stopped the room 12:00 Judas and "the poor always ye have with you" 15:40 The Greek verb that comes back in John 13 16:48 300 denarii vs. 30 pieces of silver 20:23 "She hath done what she could" 📖 SCRIPTURE IN THIS VIDEO John 12:1-8 · John 11:1-2, 43-53 · John 12:10 · John 13:1-5, 29 · Mark 14:3-11 · Matthew 26:6-16 · Luke 7:36-50 · Luke 8:2 · Deuteronomy 15:11 · Numbers 5:18 · 1 Samuel 16:13 · 1 Samuel 25:41 · Exodus 21:32 · 1 Corinthians 11:15 · Matthew 20:2 · John 19:19, 38-42 · Mark 16:1-6 · Ecclesiastes 7:1 📚 GREEK WORDS ekmassō (ἐκμάσσω) — "to wipe dry"; in John's Gospel only here and in John 13:5 litra (λίτρα) — a Roman pound, about 330 grams nardos pistikē (νάρδος πιστική) — "pure (genuine) nard" ho eschen epoiēsen (ὃ ἔσχεν ἐποίησεν) — Mark 14:8, literally "what she had, she did" 📚 HISTORICAL SOURCES Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 12 (the price of nard) Mishnah, Ketubot 7:6 (unbound hair) Gregory the Great, Homily 33 on the Gospels (AD 591) 💬 I read every comment myself, and I reply to each one personally. After looking at the evidence, do you think the woman in Luke 7 and Mary of Bethany were one woman or two? And which detail surprised you most — the price of the perfume, the hair, or the thirty pieces of silver? ☕ Support the research behind these videos: https://ko-fi.com/theliteralbible Subscribe for more of what the text is actually saying underneath the English most of us grew up with — Scripture Unlocked. #Bible #MaryOfBethany #John12