Mark 14:2

2 for they said, "Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people."

Mark 14:2 Meaning and Commentary

Mark 14:2

But they said not on the feast day
The feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread, which was nigh at hand, and would be two days hence, when there would be a great concourse of people from all parts to keep it: and therefore they did not choose to seize him, and put him to death at that time,

lest there should be an uproar of the people;
or among them, lest they should rise in his favour, and rescue him out of their hands; (See Gill on Matthew 26:5).

Mark 14:2 In-Context

1 It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him;

2 for they said, "Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people."

3 While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.

4 But some were there who said to one another in anger, "Why was the ointment wasted in this way?

5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor." And they scolded her.