“She wiped his feet with the hair of her head”
As she stood behind Him at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair. Then she kissed His feet and anointed them with the perfume. (Luke 7:37–38 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Touching but odd staging: how is she behind him at his feet during dinner?
The cultural key
Banqueters reclined on couches, propped on the left elbow, feet extended away from the table; that is how she can reach his feet from behind. Banquets in an open courtyard admitted onlookers, so an uninvited woman could enter. The scandal is the hair: a respectable woman bound her hair in public, and letting it down before men was an intimacy reserved for her husband. She performs the services the host pointedly omitted (water for feet, a kiss of greeting, oil for the head), each upgraded at cost to her own dignity: tears for water, hair for a towel, perfume on feet rather than head.
Recovered meaning
Everything Simon withheld out of coolness she supplies out of extravagant, reputation-destroying gratitude. Jesus reads the ledger aloud: great forgiveness produces great love, and the woman with nothing left to lose loved most.