For holding oil or perfumery (Mark 14:3). It was of the form of a flask or bottle. The Hebrew word (pak) used for it is more appropriately rendered “vial” in 1 Sam. 10:1, and should also be so rendered in 2 Kings 9:1, where alone else it occurs.
Box
In the Gospels the word box means a small jar of expensive perfume. Matthew and Mark both tell of a woman who comes to Jesus at a meal “having an alabaster box of very precious ointment,” and she pours it on his head. Mark adds that she “brake the box.” Luke has a similar scene in a Pharisee’s house, where a woman known in the city as a sinner brings her own alabaster box. Whether these are one event or two, readers have long seen in them a gift given without holding anything back. Mark 14:3 is a good first stop.
3 verses
Matthew
Matthew 26:7
There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.
Mark
Mark 14:3
And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.
Luke
Luke 7:37
And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,
From Easton's Bible Dictionary
Matthew George Easton, 1897