<p>12:8 <i>The poor you have always with you, but me you do not have always</i>- We note the Lord's grace and wisdom in not confronting Judas about his petty theft. Rather did the Lord focus upon protecting the dignity of Mary. His allusion is clearly to Dt. 15:11: &quot;For the poor will never cease out of the land, therefore I command you, saying, You must surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and to your poor&quot;. The context of this statement is that if Israel were obedient, then there would be no poor in the land (Dt. 15:4), but because of their disobedience which Moses foresaw, there were commandments about being generous to the poor. So perhaps there was a hidden message here to Judas, if he perceived it. If he were to be obedient, then he would not be poor, he would be blessed, and there would be no need for petty theft. The Dt. 15 passage also has the context of urging generosity to the poor, and not in any way seeking to get around it, nor begrudging any gift to them: &quot;You must surely give to him, and your heart must not be grieved when you give to him&quot; (Dt. 15:10). This was precisely what had happened- Judas and all the disciples were grieved at Mary's generosity. But clearly &quot;the poor&quot; was Jesus Himself personally. We see here not only an insight into the Lord's personal poverty, but also into how He perceived Himself as the poor in spirit. For Biblically, &quot;the poor&quot; refers not simply to the financially hard up, but to the depressed, the poor in spirit. The Messianic Psalms feature David describing himself as the &quot;poor man&quot;, although the context of many of them doesn't refer to material poverty but to David's poverty of spirit at the time. We see therefore that the Lord of the universe can totally identify with the feelings of &quot;the poor&quot;. Though He was rich, He made Himself a pauper for our sakes (2 Cor. 8:9 Gk.). That doesn't seem true in financial terms, for the Lord was never at any point financially rich (although one can speculate as to what happened to the gifts of the magi), but rather is the reference to the Lord's poverty of spirit and depression.</p>