Mark 7King James Version
Conflict with the Pharisees over washing hands. There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him. The Syrophoenician woman pleads for her daughter. Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. He heals her daughter at a distance. He puts his fingers in a deaf man's ears, spits, touches his tongue, and says, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. The man's ears are opened.
Pharisees challenge Jesus over his disciples eating with unwashed hands. He calls them hypocrites for honoring tradition over God's actual command, citing Corban. He declares all foods clean, locating defilement in the heart, not the stomach. He then goes to Tyre, where a Syrophoenician woman argues him into healing her daughter by saying even dogs get crumbs from the table. Back in the Decapolis, he heals a deaf man who cannot speak, commanding him to secrecy.
What makes a person unclean is not what goes in from outside but what comes out from inside, and the Gentile woman's faith cuts through every boundary Jesus seems to be drawing.
28: "And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs." She takes his hard metaphor and turns it back on him, refusing to be excluded, and it works.
Tyre is deep in Gentile territory, present-day Lebanon. Jesus has apparently gone there to get away from crowds and conflict. The woman finds him anyway. Her persistence in a foreign place with a foreign man who just implied she was outside the scope of his mission becomes the chapter's whole argument: the categories being enforced are not the final word.
Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem, pressing on tradition; Jesus, pushing back hard; the Syrophoenician woman, persistent and clever; her demon-possessed daughter, healed from a distance; a deaf man in the Decapolis, healed with a touch.
The Syrophoenician woman story is one of the most discussed in the Gospels: it sounds like Jesus tests or even rebuffs her before relenting. Whatever the dynamic, the result is a Gentile woman receiving a miracle on the basis of her own argument, which is striking. Then the deaf man is healed with touch, saliva, and an Aramaic command that Mark preserves: Ephphatha, be opened.
For when you feel like the blessing was not meant for you, like you are outside the boundary of who gets helped. This woman pushed back, and the door opened.
1Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem.
2And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault.
3For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.
4And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables.
5Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?
6He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
7Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
8For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
9And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
10For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:
11And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;
12Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
13And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand:
14There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.
15If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.
16And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable.
17And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;
18Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?
19And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.
20For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
21Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
22All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
23And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid.
24For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
25The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
26But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
27And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs.
28And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
29And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
30And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.
31And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.
32And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue;
33And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
34And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
35And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;
36And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.