Traditions and Commandments
1Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God) 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
What Defiles a Person
14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
The Syrophoenician Woman's Faith
24 And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 25 But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.” 29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
Jesus Heals a Deaf Man
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
4 comments:
We are assured here by Jesus that it is not what we put in our mouths that defiled us. So many times we tend to allow traditions and perceptions to define us rather than the truth of the scriptures. Jesus is looking at the heart of His people. We must pay less attention to what we say more and our motives. For Jesus looks at our hearts. Here we also see Jesus "declaring that all food are clean ".
Today in one of the devotionals I received from a friend , it looked at two kings ( King Amaziah and King Asa)
One did what was right but 'not with a perfect heart' whilst King Asa was flawed and did things imperfectly but his heart was deemed perfect. Let's us do what is right in God's sight . God desires honestyou and humility.
Why did Jesus “calls “ the Canaanite/Syrophoenician a dog ? Both in Matthew 15 and here in Mark 7 :27.
Imagine v33 happening today, eh? Jesus moistened this man's lips with saliva from his own mouth! Like lubricating a rusty hinge with WD40. This wasn't the first time he did this sort of thing. (Mark 8, John 9). If anything he is showing what the source of this healing is. Himself!
"In Him is life!" (John 1:4)
Hi! John Hallelu-YaH here, visiting your Blog today.
The woman is called a “Greek”, meaning “Gentile”, and a SyroPhoenician in Mark 7 because the Romans, for whom Mark is writing, would have qualified her either as a “Greek”, that is a non-Jew and most importantly in their eyes not “Roman” by descent, or as a “SyroPhoenician” according the current Roman region where she was born.
The same woman is called a “Canaanite” according to her ethnic background in the parallel passage of Matthew 15, because the Jews, for who Matthew writes, would have perceived her by her ancestral lineage.
The rendering of “dog” is a careless and unfortunate mistranslation. In the Greek Texts, Jesus does not actually call her a “dog”, in either account.
Jesus uses the same Greek word KUNARION in both accounts, not the word KUON.
The Greek root word KUON means a “dog” in the literal sense, and figuratively someone “unclean, low, or degraded”.
The Jewish elite would have called her a “dog” without hesitation because they considered people of Canaanite and other descents as “unclean”. Contrary to today’s perceptions, in the context of the rather ruthless cultures of the time, this would not even have been perceived as rude or insulting as it would be now.
It had long been common practice for the Jewish elite of these times to consider and call as “unclean”, i.e. “dogs” KUON in the figurative sense, anyone who was not of Jewish descent and of no influence in society. Even the people so traditionally mistreated in such manner were so used and subdued to that kind of treatment; they had long passed the "offence" stage about it.
So, even if Jesus had used the word KU0N, though he would have been perpetuating the common practice of the Jewish elite of the time, it would not have been as bad or as rude in that culture as it would be in our much more soothed present cultural trends.
But it is always important to correctly transcribe what Jesus says as He actually says it, and that goes for every part of the Scriptures, not to "interpret" it and by doing so loose the acute precision of the Original Texts.
While barely keeping appearances with the culture of the day for the sake of the Pharisees, who often had observing spies in the crowds as Scripture shows, Jesus used a much softer and much kinder expression in the word KUNARION.
Derived from the word KUON, the Greek word KUNARION means “little dog” or in English “a puppy, a pup”, and MOST IMPORTANTLY it does not have the figurative sense of being unclean or degraded.
In the Original Greek Text, it is clear that Jesus was purposefully kind to the woman by using the word KUNARION in that encounter, because He uses the harder word KUON in an impersonal manner at other times, as in Matthew 7:6 for example when He says, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs”.
It is Jerome who first produced the inaccurate and unfortunate rendering of “dogs” for KUNARION, in his 4th century Latin Vulgate “translation”, by using the Latin word “canibus” (in the account of Matthew) which means “dogs” instead of respecting the clear meaning of the Greek word by using the Latin word “catuli” which means “pups, puppies, little dogs”. And somehow revealing his confusion, Jerome correctly translates that very same Greek word as “catuli” in the account of Mark!
In the Original Greek Text of the account of this woman and her son, in both Mark 7 and Matthew 15, only the word KUNARION is pronounced by both Jesus and the woman, and the only accurate and proper translation of this word is “pups, puppies, or little dogs”, certainly not just “dogs” because such rendering as “dogs” causes the purposely nuanced vocabulary of kindness used by Jesus here to disappear from His communication with the woman, making Him sound harsh where He is in fact very loving.
Post a Comment