John 12 is the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It narrates an anointing of Jesus' feet, attributed to Mary of Bethany, as well as an account of the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook: an Abbreviated Bible Commentary. 23rd edition. Zondervan Publishing House. 1962. The gospel identifies an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as its source and possible author.Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. "John" pp. 302–10 Early Christian tradition unanimously affirmed that John composed this Gospel.Holman Illustrated Bible Handbook. Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. 2012.
Text The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 50 verses.
Textual witnesses Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Koine Greek are: Papyrus 75 (AD 175–225) Papyrus 66 () Codex Vaticanus (325–350) Codex Sinaiticus (330–360) Codex Bezae ( 400) Codex Alexandrinus (400–440) Papyrus 2 ( 550; extant verses 12–15) Papyrus 128 (6th/7th century; extant verses 16–18) Papyrus 59 (7th century; extant verses 25, 29, 31, 35)
Places Events recorded in this chapter refer to the following locations: Bethany (John 11:1), about 15 stadia (15 furlongs or 2 miles) away from Jerusalem (John 11:18) Jerusalem
Old Testament references
: a; Mark 14:34 Greek, Biblehub.com
New Testament references reflects .Marginal note at John 12:21 in the Jerusalem Bible (1966)
The anointing at Bethany (verses 1–8) Verses 1–3 Then, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom He had raised from the dead.: NKJV The narrative suggests that Jesus and His disciples travelled to Bethany from Ephraim, where Jesus had been staying to avoid the Jewish leaders who were plotting to kill him (). He dined with Lazarus, Martha and Mary, a family well known to Jesus (). This family group had been introduced to the readers of John's Gospel in chapter 11, where Mary is described as "that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair".: NKJV
Verse 2 notes that "Martha [alone] served", while Lazarus was "one of those reclining with [Jesus] at table".: ESV John Chrysostom notes that Mary did not "serve" because she had a different role in this narrative: she was a disciple rather than a server".John Chrysostom, Homily on John 65.2, quoted by De Wet, C. and Stander, H., in John Chrysostom’s Exegesis of the Anointing at Bethany (John 12:1-8), Ekklesiastikos Pharos 89 (2007) N. S. 18, accessed on 3 October 2025
Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.: New International Version.
Verse 12:3 is curiously foretold in verse 11:2, and shows many striking similarities with, but also differences from, various traditions narrated in the other canonical gospels, which has created much scholarly controversy. New Testament scholars try to establish how John's narrative of the raising of Lazarus and the subsequent feet-anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany (John 11:1–12:11,17) was composed by seeking to explain its apparent relationships with the older textual traditions of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke). The author of John seems to have combined elements from several – apparently originally unrelated – stories into a single narrative. These include the unnamed woman's head-anointing of Jesus in Bethany (Mark 14, Matthew 26), the sinful woman's feet-anointing (and hair-wiping) of Jesus in Galilee (Luke 7; these first two may have a common origin, the Lukan account likely being derived from Mark), Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary in the unnamed Galilean village (Luke 10), Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), and possibly others involving Jesus' miraculous raising of the dead (the raising of Jairus' daughter and the raising of the son of the widow of Nain). Meanwhile, other elements were removed or replaced; for example, Simon the Leper/Simon the Pharisee was replaced by Lazarus as the host of the feast in Jesus' honour, and Bethany in Judea was chosen as the setting, while most elements of John's narrative correspond to traditions that the Synoptics set in Galilee. Scholars pay particular attention to verse (and ), which may represent an effort by the author or a later redactor to stress a connection between these stories that is, however, not found in the older canonical gospels. They further argue that the actual anointing will not be narrated until verse 12:3, and that neither Mary, nor Martha, nor the village of these sisters, nor any anointing is mentioned in the Gospel of John before this point, suggesting that the author (or redactor) assumes the readers already have knowledge of these characters, this location and this event, and wants to tell them that these were connected (which he apparently knew the readers did not commonly know/believe yet) long before giving the readers more details. Esler and Piper (2006) posited that verse 11:2 is evidence that the author of the Gospel of John deliberately mixed up several traditions in an 'audacious attempt (...) to rework the collective memory of the Christ-movement'. According to Esler, the author did not strive to give a historically accurate account of what had happened, but instead, for theological purposes, combined various existing narratives in order to construct Lazarus, Mary and Martha of Bethany as a prototypical Christian family, whose example is to be followed by Christians.
Verses 4–6 Judas Iscariot, described as "one of [Jesus'] disciples" and "Simon’s son, who would betray Him", asks “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii () and the money given to poor people (or the poor)?” The New International Version, New King James Version and New Living Translation all equate this amount to a year's wages. In the oil is also valued at three hundred denarii; in it could have been sold for "a high (but unspecified) price". H W Watkins computes that, since in , two hundred denarii would purchase food for 5,000, three hundred denarii would have fed 7,500 people.Ellicott's Commentary for Modern Readers on Matthew 26, accessed 1 June 2016
John's Gospel is the only one which observes that Judas was responsible for the disciples' "common fund" or "money box", both here in verse 6 and again in . The term το γλωσσοκομον (glōssokomon) "means literally "a case for mouthpieces" of musical instruments, and hence any portable chest. It occurs in the Septuagint texts of .Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on John 12, accessed 2 June 2016
Verse 7 But Jesus said, “Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial.: NKJV The New Revised Standard Version, differing from other translations, reads "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial".: NRSV
The plot to kill Lazarus (verses 9–11) A great many of the Jews came to Bethany, "not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. The wording of verse 9 suggests that Jesus remains a while in the town. But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus" (). Augustine comments on "the folly of the priests — as if Christ could not raise Lazarus a second time!" Quoted in Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on John 12, accessed 2 June 2016 Matthew Poole asks, "What had Lazarus done?"Poole, M., Matthew Poole's Commentary on John 12, accessed 27 January 2024 The plot to put Lazarus to death may be read alongside the developing plot to kill Jesus (; ) as if there were parallel plots "to kill Lazarus as well as Jesus",Pulpit Commentary on , accessed 2 June 2016 or even to kill Lazarus first - as Albert Barnes suggests: "as it was determined to kill Jesus, so they consulted about the propriety of removing Lazarus first, that the number of his followers might be lessened, and that the death of Jesus might make less commotion".Barnes' Notes on John 12, accessed 2 June 2016 But the observation that "on account of [Lazarus] many of the Jews went away (from the Pharisees) and believed in Jesus () could indicate that in the early church Lazarus was influential in converting many Jews to the belief that Jesus was the Messiah.
Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem (verses 12–19)
John 12:12 states that on "the next day", a great multitude who had come to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, "heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem", and so they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him. presents Jesus in Bethany "six days before the Passover", so His entry into Jerusalem can be understood as taking place five days before the Passover, on "the tenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, on which the paschal lamb was set apart to be 'kept up until the fourteenth day of the same month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel were to kill it in the evening'.Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary on John 12, accessed 3 June 2016 "‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month" ().
Greek pilgrims in Jerusalem (verses 20–36)
Some ethnic Greeks () had also made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast (John 12:20). Jesus' interest in teaching the Greeks of the diaspora has already proved a matter of some intrigue in chapter 7 (). Bengel's Gnomen notes that "it is not clear that they were circumcised: certainly, at least, they were worshippers of the One God of Israel" – they were present in Jerusalem "that they might worship at the feast (). John uses the same word, προσκυνειν, proskunein, literally to kneel and kiss the ground,Strong, 4352: proskuneó, Concordance via Bible hub. in in relation to the Jewish-Samaritan debate over the sacred place "where one ought to worship" (John 4:20; NKJV translation), where He announces that "the hour is coming when you will [worship] neither on this mountain (Mount Gerizim), nor in Jerusalem".
Meyer's New Testament Commentary and the Expanded Bible (2011) : Expanded Bible: "Gentiles — here meant to represent people from all over the world" both state that these pilgrims were "gentiles". They had presumably "heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem" on the same basis as the Jewish multitude mentioned in John 12:12, although Meyer raises the possibility that "they came to Philip accidentally".Meyer, John 12, NT Commentary, accessed 10 June 2016 The evangelist raises the question of whether they can see (meet) Expanded Bible, note at (or believe in) The interplay between seeing and believing is often referred to in John's Gospel: see verses 44–5 in this chapter, and also , , and 20:29a) Jesus (John 12:21). "They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, 'Sir, we wish to see Jesus'. Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus. The evangelist repeats the information already provided at , that Philip came from Bethsaida in Galilee, which was "also the city of Andrew and Peter". Both Philip and Andrew have Greek names. Watkins considers it "a striking coincidence, and perhaps more than this, that the Greeks thus came into connection with the only Apostles who bear Greek names".
Verse 23