Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands when they eat bread.”[1]
3 He answered, “And why do you break God’s command for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say that if anyone tells his father or mother, ‘Whatever you might have gained from me is a gift,’[2] 6 he need not honor his father. So you have voided God’s word for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 9 They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were God’s commands.’”
10 Then he called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand: 11 It’s not what goes into the mouth that makes a person unclean; it’s what comes out of the mouth — that is what makes a person unclean.”[3]
12 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard what you said?”
13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14 Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
15 Peter spoke up and said, “Explain this parable to us.”
16 Jesus said, “Are you still without understanding too? 17 Don’t you see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled into the latrine? 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart — and those are what make a person unclean. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, forbidden sex, thefts, false testimonies, slanders. 20 These are what make a person unclean. But eating with unwashed hands does not make a person unclean.”
21 Jesus left that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 And look — a Canaanite woman from that area came out, crying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is badly demon-possessed.”[4]
23 But he did not answer her a word. His disciples came and urged him, “Send her away — she keeps shouting after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”
26 He answered, “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”[5]
27 She said, “Yes, Lord — but even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, your faith is great. Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
29 Jesus moved on from there and came beside the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountain and sat down there. 30 Large crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others. They laid them at his feet, and he healed them — 31 so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.
32 Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “My heart goes out to the crowd, because they’ve stayed with me three days now and have nothing to eat. I don’t want to send them away hungry — they might collapse on the way.”
33 The disciples said to him, “Where in this desert could we get enough bread to satisfy such a large crowd?”
34 Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven — and a few small fish.”
35 He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. 36 Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 37 Everyone ate and was satisfied, and they picked up the leftover broken pieces — seven large baskets full. 38 Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children.
39 After he sent the crowds away, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan.[6]
Notes
Note 1. This handwashing before meals — pouring water over the hands — was a matter of ritual purity, not hygiene. It was part of what the Pharisees call the “tradition of the elders,” a body of practice developed by teachers rather than commanded outright in the written Law of Moses. ↩
Note 2. This describes a vow — Mark’s parallel keeps the technical word “Corban” — in which a person declared property dedicated to God. Once pronounced, the vow was treated as binding and could be used to place resources off-limits, so a son could withhold support from aging parents by claiming his means were pledged. ↩
Note 3. The Greek verb is koinoō, literally “to make common” — to strip something of its set-apart, holy status. It is the language of ritual purity. ↩
Note 4. Mark tells the same story but calls the woman a “Syrophoenician” (Mark 7:26), a contemporary regional term. Matthew instead uses “Canaanite,” a name for the land’s ancient pre-Israelite inhabitants who no longer existed as a distinct people. ↩
Note 5. The Greek kynarion is a diminutive of the ordinary word for dog. It can mean a household pet that lives under the table — which fits the woman’s reply about crumbs — but by this period such diminutives had often lost their force and simply meant “dogs.” Which force it carries here is not settled. ↩
Note 6. The location is uncertain; the parallel in Mark 8:10 reads “Dalmanutha,” another otherwise unknown name. Magadan is often connected with Magdala (modern Migdal), a fishing town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee and the home of Mary Magdalene. ↩