April 21, 2026 -Why Feet
- brooks16055
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
John 11:2 NIV
[2] (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)
The washing of Jesus feet has not yet happened chronologically. It is interesting to me that John makes a point to mention it here. And it got me thinking about feet. This Mary who sat at Jesus feet while her sister Martha cooked and cleaned.
John 11:32 NIV
[32] When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Falls at His feet and cries out to Him in grief about her brother's death.
And later will pour expensive oil on His feet and wash His feet with her tears and hair.
I found the below article about feet in the Jewish culture. The below is from this article but you should read the entire article.
In the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), whenever a messenger from heaven came to earth, the first thing the humans would try to do was to volunteer to wash their feet (Genesis 18.4). This act is like saying “I honour you because you are Holy, you are from Heaven”. ...
Because God uses the passage of the sinful woman anointing Yeshua’s feet to prophesy who Jesus/Yeshua was. She could see He was from Heaven, so she washed His feet, just like her Jewish Old Testament ancestors did to the LORD when He visited Abraham (Genesis 18).
The clue, that she was seeing her beloved Messiah, is she used spikenard. The only other place in Scripture where spikenard is used is in the Song of Songs; the poetry Biblical book symbolising Messiah and His beloved. It was an act of passionate love and marital preparation. Far from acting like a prostitute, as a Jew, she was treating Jesus/Yeshua as her Beloved and her Betrothed. This was a Biblically-sound move according to Hebrew Scriptures on her part, which, as a Jewish woman, she would have known. In the Jewish betrothal the man is the one who sets out how he is going to look after his bride-to-be (in a Ketubah). The woman doesn't. It's the incredibly masculine act of protecting and taking care of her. She, the sinful woman, could see who He was and yet endured rejection from others for it. They were so focused on her social label that they missed the entire Heavenly message. But she didn't care. She could see who her groom-to-be was and focused her mind and actions on Him alone. Smart! Smart to spend a year's wages on the spikenard but gain an eternity of protection, provision and love with Her Groom-King.
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