Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Mark 14:3

3. And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman--It was "Mary," as we learn from Joh 12:3.

having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard--pure nard, a celebrated aromatic--(See So 1:12).

very precious--"very costly" (Joh 12:3).

and she brake the box, and poured it on his head--"and anointed," adds John (Joh 12:3), "the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment." The only use of this was to refresh and exhilarate--a grateful compliment in the East, amid the closeness of a heated atmosphere, with many guests at a feast. Such was the form in which Mary's love to Christ, at so much cost to herself, poured itself out.