Mark 14:1-9 ▼

1 Two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the chief priests and the experts in the law were trying to find a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.

2 For they said, |Not during the feast, so there won't be a riot among the people.|

3 Now while Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of costly aromatic oil from pure nard. After breaking open the jar, she poured it on his head.

4 But some who were present indignantly said to one another, |Why this waste of expensive ointment?

5 It could have been sold for more than three hundred silver coins and the money given to the poor!| So they spoke angrily to her.

6 But Jesus said, |Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a good service for me.

7 For you will always have the poor with you, and you can do good for them whenever you want. But you will not always have me!

8 She did what she could. She anointed my body beforehand for burial.

9 I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.|