Verses 1-37
Chapter 7
7:1-4 There gathered
together to Jesus the Pharisees, and some of the experts in the law who
had come down from Jerusalem. They saw that some of his disciples ate
their bread with hands which were ceremonially unclean, that is to say
hands which had not undergone the prescribed washings; for the
Pharisees, and all the Jews, who hold to the traditions of the ciders,
do not eat unless they wash their hands, using the fist as the law
prescribes; and when they come in from the market-place they do not eat
unless they immerse their whole bodies; and there are many other
traditions which they observe which relate to the prescribed washings of
cups and pitchers and vessels of bronze.
The difference and the argument between Jesus and the Pharisees
and the experts in the law, which this chapter relates, are of
tremendous importance, for they show us the very essence and core of the
divergence between Jesus and the orthodox Jew of his time.
The question asked was, Why do Jesus and his disciples not
observe the tradition of the elders? What was this tradition, and what
was its moving spirit?
Originally, for the Jew, the Law meant two things; it meant,
first and foremost, the Ten Commandments, and, second, the first five
books of the Old Testament, or, as they are called, the Pentateuch. Now
it is true that the Pentateuch contains a certain number of detailed
regulations and instructions; but, in the matter of moral questions,
what is laid down is a series of great moral principles which a man must
interpret and apply for himself. For long the Jews were content with
that. But in the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ there came
into being a class of legal experts whom we know as the Scribes. They
were not content with great moral principles; they had what can only be
called a passion for definition. They wanted these great principles
amplified, expanded, broken down until they issued in thousands and
thousands of little rules and regulations governing every possible
action and every possible situation in life. These rules and regulations
were not written down until long after the time of Jesus. They are what
is called the Oral Law; it is they which are the tradition of the
elders.
The word elders does not mean, in this phrase, the officials of
the synagogue; rather it means the ancients, the great legal experts of
the old days, like Hillel and Shammai. Much later, in the third century
after Christ, a summary of all these rules and regulations was made and
written down, and that summary is known as the Mishnah.
There are two aspects of these scribal rules and regulations
which emerge in the argument in this passage. One is about the washing
of hands. The Scribes and Pharisees accused the disciples of Jesus of
eating with unclean hands. The Greek word is koinos (Greek #2839). Ordinarily, koinos (Greek #2839)
means common; then it comes to describe something which is ordinary in
the sense that it is not sacred, something that is profane as opposed to
sacred things; and finally it describes something, as it does here,
which is ceremonially unclean and unfit for the service and worship of
God.
There were definite and rigid rules for the washing of hands.
Note that this hand-washing was not in the interests of hygienic purity;
it was ceremonial cleanness which was at stake. Before every meal, and
between each of the courses, the hands had to be washed, and they had to
be washed in a certain way. The hands, to begin with, had to be free of
any coating of sand or mortar or gravel or any such substance. The
water for washing had to be kept in special large stone jars, so that it
itself was clean in the ceremonial sense and so that it might be
certain that it had been used for no other purpose, and that nothing had
fallen into it or had been mixed with it. First, the hands were held
with finger tips pointing upwards; water was poured over them and had to
run at least down to the wrist; the minimum amount of water was one
quarter of a log, which is equal to one and a half egg-shells full of
water. While the hands were still wet each hand had to be cleansed with
the fist of the other. That is what the phrase about using the fist
means; the fist of one hand was rubbed into the palm and against the
surface of the other. This meant that at this stage the hands were wet
with water; but that water was now unclean because it had touched
unclean hands. So, next, the hands had to be held with finger tips
pointing downwards and water had to be poured over them in such a way
that it began at the wrists and ran off at the finger tips. After all
that had been done the hands were clean.
To fail to do this was in Jewish eyes, not to be guilty of bad
manners, not to be dirty in the health sense, but to be unclean in the
sight of God. The man who ate with unclean hands was subject to the
attacks of a demon called Shibta. To omit so to wash the hands was to
become liable to poverty and destruction. Bread eaten with unclean hands
was not better than excrement. A Rabbi who once omitted the ceremony
was buried in excommunication. Another Rabbi, imprisoned by the Romans,
used the water given to him for handwashing rather than for drinking and
in the end nearly perished of thirst, because he was determined to
observe the rules of cleanliness rather than satisfy his thirst.
That to the Pharisaic and Scribal Jew was religion. It was
ritual, ceremonial, and regulations like that which they considered to
be essence of the service of God. Ethical religion was buried under a
mass of taboos and rules.
The last verses of the passage deal further with this conception
of uncleanness. A thing might in the ordinary sense be completely clean
and yet in the legal sense be unclean. There is something about this
conception of uncleanness in Leviticus 11:1-47; Leviticus 12:1-8; Leviticus 13:1-59; Leviticus 14:1-57; Leviticus 15:1-33, and in Numbers 19:1-22 . Nowadays we would talk rather of things being tabu than of being unclean. Certain animals were unclean (Leviticus 11:1-47
). A woman after child-birth was unclean; a leper was unclean; anyone
who touched a dead body was unclean. And anyone who had so become
unclean made unclean anything he in turn touched. A Gentile was unclean;
food touched by a Gentile was unclean; any vessel touched by a Gentile
was unclean. So, then, when a strict Jew returned from the market place
he immersed his whole body in clean water to take away the taint he
might have acquired.
Obviously vessels could easily become unclean; they might be
touched by an unclean person or by unclean food. This is what our
passage means by the washings of cups and pitchers and vessels of
bronze. In the Mishnah there are no fewer than twelve treatises on this
kind of uncleanness. If we take some actual examples we will see how far
this went. A hollow vessel made of pottery could contract uncleanness
inside but not outside; that is to say, it did not matter who or what
touched it outside, but it did matter what touched it inside. If it
became unclean it must be broken; and no unbroken piece must remain
which was big enough to hold enough oil to anoint the little toe. A flat
plate without a rim could not become unclean at all; but a plate with a
rim could. If vessels made with leather, bone or glass were flat they
could not contract uncleanness at all; if they were hollow they could
become unclean outside and inside. If they were unclean they must be
broken; and the break must be a hole at least big enough for a
medium-sized pomegranate to pass through. To cure uncleanness earthen
vessels must be broken; other vessels must be immersed, boiled, purged
with fire--in the case of metal vessels--and polished. A three-legged
table could contract uncleanness; if it lost one or two legs it could
not; if it lost three legs it could, for then it could be used as a
board and a board could become unclean. Things made of metal could
become unclean, except a door, a bolt, a lock, a hinge, a knocker and a
gutter. Wood used in metal utensils could become unclean; but metal used
in wood utensils could not. Thus a wooden key with metal teeth could
become unclean; but a metal key with wooden teeth could not.
We have taken some time over these scribal laws, this tradition
of the elders, because that is what Jesus was up against. To the scribes
and Pharisees these rules and regulations were the essence of religion.
To observe them was to please God; to break them was to sin. This was
their idea of goodness and of the service of God. In the religious sense
Jesus and these people spoke different languages. It was precisely
because he had no use for all these regulations that they considered him
a bad man. There is a fundamental cleavage here--the cleavage between
the man who sees religion as ritual, ceremonial, rules and regulations,
and the man who sees in religion loving God and loving his fellow-men.
The next passage will develop this; but it is clear that Jesus'
idea of religion and that of the scribes and Pharisees had nothing in
common at all.
7:5-8 So the Pharisees
and the experts in the law asked him, "Why do your disciples not
conduct themselves as the tradition of the elders prescribes, but eat
bread with hands that are unclean?" He said to them, "Isaiah did well
when he prophesied about you hypocrites, as it stands written, 'This
people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.
This so-called reverence of men is an empty thing, for they teach as
doctrine human rules and regulations.' While you hold fast the tradition
of men you abandon the command of God."
The scribes and Pharisees saw that the disciples of Jesus did
not observe the niceties of the tradition and the code of the oral law
in regard to the washing of hands before and during meals, and they
asked why. Jesus began by quoting to them a passage from Isaiah 29:13.
There Isaiah accused the people of his day of honouring God with their
lips while their hearts were really far away. In principle Jesus accused
the scribes and Pharisees of two things.
(i) He accused them of hypocrisy. The word hupokrites (Greek #5273)
has an interesting and revealing history. It begins by meaning simply
one who answers; it goes on to mean one who answers in a set dialogue or
a set conversation, that is to say an actor; and finally it means, not
simply an actor on the stage, but one whose whole life is a piece of
acting without any sincerity behind it at all. Anyone to whom religion
is a legal thing, anyone to whom religion means carrying out certain
external rules and regulations, anyone to whom religion is entirely
connected with the observation of a certain ritual and the keeping of a
certain number of tabus is in the end bound to be, in this sense, a
hypocrite. The reason is this--he believes that he is a good man if he
carries out the correct acts and practices, no matter what his heart and
his thoughts are like.
To take the case of the legalistic Jew in the time of Jesus, he
might hate his fellow man with all his heart, he might be full of envy
and jealousy and concealed bitterness and pride; that did not matter so
long as he carried out the correct handwashings and observed the correct
laws about cleanness and uncleanness. Legalism takes account of a man's
outward actions; but it takes no account at all of his inward feelings.
He may well be meticulously serving God in outward things, and bluntly
disobeying God in inward things--and that is hypocrisy.
The devout Mohammedan must pray to God a certain number of times
each day. To do so he carries his prayer mat; wherever he is, he will
unroll the mat, fall upon his knees, say his prayers and then go on.
There is a story of a Mohammedan who was pursuing a man with upraised
knife to murder him. Just then the call to prayer rang out. Immediately
he stopped, spread out his prayer mat, knelt, said his prayer as fast as
he could; then rose and continued his murderous pursuit. The prayer was
simply a form and a ritual, an outward observance, merely the correct
interlude in the career of murder.
There is no greater religious peril than that of identifying
religion with outward observance. There is no commoner religious mistake
than to identify goodness with certain so-called religious acts.
Church-going, bible-reading, careful financial giving, even time-tabled
prayer do not make a man a good man. The fundamental question is, how is
a man's heart towards God and towards his fellow-men? And if in his
heart there are enmity, bitterness, grudges, pride, not all the outward
religious observances in the world will make him anything other than a
hypocrite.
(ii) The second accusation that Jesus implicitly levelled
against these legalists was that they substituted the efforts of human
ingenuity for the laws of God. For their guidance for life they did not
depend on listening to God; they depended on listening to the clever
arguments and debates, the fine-spun niceties, the ingenious
interpretations of the legal experts. Cleverness never can be the basis
of true religion. True religion can never be the product of man's mind.
It must always come, not from a man's ingenious discoveries, but from
the simple listening to and accepting the voice of God.
7:9-13 He said to
them, "You make an excellent job of completely nullifying the command of
God in order to observe your own tradition. For Moses said, 'Honour
your father and your mother.' And, 'He who speaks evil of his father or
mother shall certainly die.' But you say, that, if a man says to his
father or mother, 'That by which you might have been helped by me is
Korban,'--that is to say, God-dedicated--you no longer allow him to do
anything for his father and mother, and you thereby render invalid the
word of God by your tradition which you hand on. You do many things like
that."
The exact meaning of this passage is very difficult to discover. It hinges on the word Korban (Greek #2878) which seems to have undergone two stages of meaning in Jewish usage.
(i) The word meant a gift. It was used to describe something
which was specially dedicated to God. A thing which was Korban (Greek #2878)
was as if it had already been laid upon the altar. That is to say, it
was completely set apart from all ordinary purposes and usages and
became the property of God. If a man wished to dedicate some of his
money or his property to God, he declared it Korban (Greek #2878), and thereafter it might never again be used for any ordinary or secular purpose.
It does seem that, even at this stage, the word was capable of
very shrewd usage. For instance, a creditor might have a debtor who
refused or was unwilling to pay. The creditor might then say, "The debt
you owe me is Korban (Greek #2878),"
that is to say, "The debt you owe me is dedicated to God." From then on
the debtor ceased to be in debt to a fellow-man and began to be in debt
to God, which was far more serious. It may well be that the creditor
could discharge his part of the matter by making a quite small symbolic
payment to the Temple, and then keeping the rest for himself. In any
event, to introduce the idea of Korban (Greek #2878) into this kind of debt was a kind of religious blackmail transforming a debt owed to man into a debt owed to God.
It does seem that the idea of Korban (Greek #2878) was already capable of misuse. If that be the idea behind this, the passage speaks of a man declaring his property Korban (Greek #2878),
sacred to God, and then when his father or mother in dire need comes to
him for help, saying, "I am sorry that I cannot give you any help
because nothing that I have is available for you because it is dedicated
to God." The vow was made an excuse to avoid helping a parent in need.
The vow which the scribal legalist insisted upon involved breaking one
of the ten commandments which are the very law of God.
(ii) There came a time when Korban (Greek #2878) became a much more generalized oath. When a person declared anything Korban (Greek #2878) he entirely alienated it from the person to whom he was talking. A man might say, "Korban (Greek #2878)
that by which I might be profited by you," and, in so doing, he bound
himself never to touch, taste, have or handle anything possessed by the
person so addressed. Or, he might say, "Korban (Greek #2878)
that by which you might be profited by me," and, in so saying, he bound
himself never to help or to benefit the person so addressed by anything
that belonged to himself. If that be the use here, the passage means
that, at some time, perhaps in a fit of anger or rebellion, a man had
said to his parents, "Korban (Greek #2878)
anything by which you may ever be helped by me," and that afterwards,
even if he repented from his rash vow, the scribal legalists declared
that it was unbreakable and that he might never again render his parents
any assistance.
Whichever be the case--and it is not possible to be
certain--this much is sure, that there were cases in which the strict
performance of the scribal law made it impossible for a man to carry out
the law of the ten commandments.
Jesus was attacking a system which put rules and regulations
before the claim of human need. The commandment of God was that the
claim of human love should come first; the commandment of the scribes
was that the claim of legal rules and regulations should come first.
Jesus was quite sure that any regulation which prevented a man from
giving help where help was needed was nothing less than a contradiction
of the law of God.
We must have a care that we never allow rules to paralyse the
claims of love. Nothing that prevents us helping a fellowman can ever be
a rule approved by God.
7:14-23 He called the
crowd to him again and said, "Listen to me, all of you and understand.
There is nothing which goes into a man from outside which can render him
unclean; but it is the things which come out of a man which render the
man unclean." When he came into the house, away from the crowd, his
disciples asked him about this hard saying. He said to them, "So, then,
are you too unable to grasp things? Do you not understand that
everything that goes into a man from outside cannot render him unclean,
because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and it is
then evacuated from him by natural bodily processes?" (The effect of
this saying is to render all foods clean.) But he went on to say, "What
comes out of a man, that is what renders the man unclean. it is from
within, from the heart, that there come evil designs, fornications,
thefts, murders, adulteries, covetous deeds, evil deeds, guile, wanton
wickedness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from
within, and they render a man unclean."
Although it may not seem so now, this passage, when it was
first spoken, was well-nigh the most revolutionary passage in the New
Testament. Jesus has been arguing with the legal experts about.
different aspects of the traditional law. He has shown the irrelevance
of the elaborate handwashings. He has shown how rigid adherence to the
traditional law can actually mean disobedience to the law of God. But
here he says something more startling yet. He declares that nothing that
goes into a man can possibly defile him, for it is received only into
his body which rids itself of it in the normal, physical way.
No Jew ever believed that and no orthodox Jew believes it yet. Leviticus 11:1-47
has a long list of animals that are unclean and may not be used for
food. How very seriously this was taken can be seen from many an
incident in Maccabean times. At that time the Syrian king, Antiochus
Epiphanes, was determined to root out the Jewish faith. One of the
things he demanded was that the Jews should eat pork, swine's flesh but
they died in their hundreds rather than do so. "Howbeit many in Israel
were fully resolved and confirmed in themselves not to eat any unclean
thing. Wherefore they chose rather to die, that they might not be
defiled with meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant;
so then they died." (1 Maccabees 1:62-63.)
Fourth Maccabees (chapter 7) tells the story of a widow and her seven
sons. It was demanded that they should eat swine's flesh. They refused.
The first had his tongue cut out, the ends of his limbs cut off; and he
was then roasted alive in a pan; the second had his hair and the skin of
his skull torn off; one by one they were tortured to death while their
aged mother looked on and cheered them on; they died rather than eat
meat which to them was unclean.
It is in face of this that Jesus made his revolutionary
statement that nothing that goes into a man can make him unclean. He was
wiping out at one stroke the laws for which Jews had suffered and died.
No wonder the disciples were amazed.
In effect Jesus was saying that things cannot be either unclean
or clean in any real religious sense of the term. Only persons can be
really defiled; and what defiles a person is his own actions, which are
the product of his own heart. This was new doctrine and shatteringly new
doctrine. The Jew had, and still has, a whole system of things which
are clean and unclean. With one sweeping pronouncement Jesus declared
the whole thing irrelevant and that uncleanness has nothing to do with
what a man takes into his body but everything to do with what comes out
of his heart.
Let us look at the things Jesus lists as coming from the heart and making a man unclean.
He begins with evil designs (dialogismoi, Greek #1261).
Every outward act of sin is preceded by an inward act of choice;
therefore Jesus begins with the evil thought from which the evil action
comes. Next come fornications (porneiai, Greek #4202); later he is to list acts of adultery (moicheiai, Greek #3430); but this first word is a wide word--it means every kind of traffic in sexual vice. There follow thefts (klopai, Greek #2829). In Greek there are two words for a robber--kleptes (Greek #2812) and lestes (Greek #3027). Lestes (Greek #3027) is a brigand; Barabbas was a lestes (Greek #3027) (John 18:40) and a brigand may be a very brave man although an outlaw. Kleptes (Greek #2812) is a thief; Judas was a kleptes (Greek #2812) when he pilfered from the box (John 12:6). A kleptes (Greek #2812)
is a mean, deceitful, dishonourable pilferer, without even the
redeeming quality of a certain audacious gallantry that a brigand must
have. Murders (phonoi, Greek #5408) and adulteries come next in the list and their meaning is clear.
Then comes covetous deeds (pleonexiai, Greek #4124).
Pleonexia comes from two Greek words meaning to have more. It has been
defined as the accursed love of having. It has been defined as "the
spirit which snatches at that which it is not right to take," "the
baneful appetite for that which belongs to others." It is the spirit
which snatches at things, not to hoard them like a miser, but to spend
them in lust and luxury. Cowley defined it as, "Rapacious appetite for
gain, not for its own sake, but for the pleasure of refunding it
immediately through all the channels of pride and luxury." It is not the
desire for money and things; it includes the desire for power, the
insatiable lust of the flesh. Plato said, "The desire of man is like a
sieve or pierced vessel which he ever tries to, and can never fill."
Pleonexia (Greek #4124) is that lust for having which is in the heart of the man who sees happiness in things instead of in God.
There follows evil deeds. In Greek there are two words for evil--kakos (Greek #2560), which describes a thing which in itself is evil, and poneros (Greek #4190), which describes a person or a thing which is actively evil. Poneriai (Greek #4189) is the word used here. The man who is poneros (Greek #4190)
is the man in whose heart there is the desire to harm. He is, as Bengel
said, "trained in every crime and completely equipped to inflict evil
on any man." Jeremy Taylor defined this poneria (Greek #4189)
as "aptness to do shrewd turns, to delight in mischiefs and tragedies;
loving to trouble our neighbour, and to do him ill offices; crossness,
perverseness and peevishness of action in our intercourse." Poneria (Greek #4189) not only corrupts the man who has it; it corrupts others too. Poneros (Greek #4190)--the
Evil One--is the title of Satan. The worst of men, the man who is doing
Satan's work, is the man who, being bad himself, makes others as bad as
himself.
Next comes dolos (Greek #1388);
translated guile. It comes from a word which means bait; it is used for
trickery and deceit. It is used for instance of a mousetrap. When the
Greeks were besieging Troy and could not gain entry, they sent the
Trojans the present of a great wooden horse, as if it was a token of
good will. The Trojans opened their gates and took it in. But the horse
was filled with Greeks who in the night broke out and dealt death and
devastation to Troy. That exactly is dolos (Greek #1388). It is crafty, cunning, deceitful, clever treachery.
Next on the list is wanton wickedness (aselgeia, Greek #766). The Greeks defined aselgeia (Greek #766)
as "a disposition of soul that resents all discipline," as "a spirit
that acknowledges no restraints, dares whatsoever its caprice and wanton
insolence may suggest." The great characteristic of the man who is
guilty of aselgeia (Greek #766) is that he is lost to decency and to shame. An evil man may hide his sin, but the man who has aselgeia (Greek #766) sins without a qualm and never hesitates to shock his fellow-men. Jezebel was the classic instance of aselgeia (Greek #766) when she build a heathen shrine in Jerusalem the Holy City.
Envy is literally the evil eye, the eye that looks on the
success and happiness of another in such a way that it would cast an
evil spell upon it if it could. The next word is blasphemia (Greek #988).
When this is used of words against man, it means slander; when it is
used of words against God, it means blasphemy. It means insulting man or
God.
There follows pride (huperephania, Greek #5243).
The Greek word literally means "showing oneself above." It describes
the attitude of the man "who has a certain contempt for everyone except
himself." The interesting thing about this word, as the Greeks used it,
is that it describes an attitude that may never become public. It may be
that in his heart of hearts a man is always secretly comparing himself
with others. He might even ape humility and yet in his heart be proud.
Sometimes, of course, the pride is evident. The Greeks had a legend of
this pride. They said that the Giants, the sons of Tartarus and Ge, in
their pride sought to storm heaven and were cast down by Hercules. That
is huperephania (Greek #5243).
It is setting oneself up against God; it is "invading God's
prerogatives." That is why it has been called "the peak of all the
vices," and why "God opposes the proud." (James 4:6.)
Lastly comes folly (aphrosune, Greek #877).
This does not mean the foolishness that is due to weakness of intellect
and lack of brains; it means moral folly. It describes, not the man who
is a brainless fool, but the man who chooses to play the fool.
It is a truly terrible list which Jesus cites of the things that
come from the human heart. When we examine it a shudder surely passes
over us. Nonetheless it is a summons, not to a fastidious shrinking from
such things, but to an honest self-examination of our own hearts.
7:24-30 He left there
and went away into the regions of Tyre and Sidon. He went into a house
and he did not wish anyone to know about it, but he could not be there
without people knowing about it. When a woman whose daughter had an
unclean spirit heard about him, she immediately came and threw herself
at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth. She asked
him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "First of
all you must let the children eat their fill; it is not right to take
the bread that belongs to the children and to throw it to the dogs."
"True, sir," she answered, "but even the dogs below the table eat some
of the bits of bread that the children throw away." He said to her,
"Because of this word, go your way! The demon has come out of your
daughter!" She went away and found the child thrown upon her bed and the
demon gone.
When this incident is seen against its background, it becomes
one of the most moving and extraordinary in the life of Jesus.
First, let us look at the geography of the incident. Tyre and
Sidon were cities of Phoenicia, which was a part of Syria. Phoenicia
stretched north from Carmel, right along the coastal plain. It lay
between Galilee and the sea coast. Phoenicia indeed, as Josephus puts
it, "encompassed Galilee."
Tyre lay 40 miles north-west of Capernaum. Its name means The
Rock. It was so called because off the shore lay two great rocks joined
by a three-thousand-feet-long ridge. This formed a natural breakwater
and Tyre was one of the great natural harbours of the world from the
earliest times. Not only did the rocks form a breakwater, they also
formed a defence; and Tyre was not only a famous harbour, she was also a
famous fortress. It was from Tyre and Sidon that there came the first
sailors who steered by the stars. Until men learned to find their way by
the stars, ships had to hug the coast and to lay up by night; but the
Phoenician sailors circumnavigated the Mediterranean and found their way
through the Pillars of Hercules until they came to Britain and the tin
mines of Cornwall. It may well be that in their adventuring they had
even circumnavigated Africa.
Sidon was 26 miles north-east of Tyre and 60 miles north of
Capernaum. Like Tyre it had a natural breakwater, and its origin as a
harbour and a city was so ancient that no man knew who had founded it.
Although the Phoenician cities were part of Syria, they were all
independent, and they were all rivals. They had their own kings, their
own gods and their own coinage. Within a radius of 15 or 20 miles they
were supreme. Outwardly they looked to the sea; inland they looked to
Damascus; and the ships of the sea and the caravans of many lands flowed
into them. In the end Sidon lost her trade and her greatness to Tyre
and sank into a demoralised degeneracy. But the Phoenician sailors will
always be famous as the men who first found their way by following the
stars.
(i) So, then, the first tremendous thing which meets us is that
Jesus is in Gentile territory. Is it any accident that this incident
comes here? The previous incident shows Jesus wiping out the distinction
between clean and unclean foods. Can it be that here, in symbol, we
have him wiping out the difference between clean and unclean people?
Just as the Jew would never soil his lips with forbidden foods, so he
would never soil his life by contact with the unclean Gentile. It may
well be that here Jesus is saying by implication that the Gentiles are
not unclean but that they, too, have their place within the Kingdom.
Jesus must have come north to this region for temporary escape.
In his own country he was under attack from every side. Long ago the
scribes and Pharisees had branded him as a sinner because he broke
through their rules and regulations. Herod regarded him as a menace. The
people of Nazareth treated him with scandalized dislike. The hour would
come when he would face his enemies with blazing defiance, but that was
not yet. Before it came, he would seek the peace and quiet of
seclusion, and in that withdrawal from the enmity of the Jews the
foundation of the Kingdom of the Gentiles was laid. It is the forecast
of the whole history of Christianity. The rejection of the Jews had
become the opportunity of the Gentiles.
(ii) But there is more to it than that. Ideally these Phoenician
cities were part of the realm of Israel. When, under Joshua, the land
was being partitioned out, the tribe of Asher was allocated the land "as
far as Sidon the Great...and to the fortified city of Tyre" (Joshua 19:28-29).
They had never been able to subdue their territory and they had never
entered into it. Again is it not symbolic? Where the might of arms was
helpless, the conquering love of Jesus Christ was victorious. The
earthly Israel had failed to gather in the people of Phoenicia; now the
true Israel had come upon them. It was not a strange land into which
Jesus came; it was a land which long ago God had given him for his own.
He was not so much coming amongst strangers as entering into his
inheritance.
(iii) The story itself must be read with insight. The woman came
asking Jesus' help for her daughter. His answer was that it was not
right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs. At first it is
an almost shocking saying.
The dog was not the well-loved guardian that it is to-day; more
commonly it was a symbol of dishonour. To the Greek, the word dog meant a
shameless and audacious woman; it was used exactly with the connotation
that we use the word bitch to-day. To the Jew it was equally a term of
contempt. "Do not give dogs what is holy." (Matthew 7:6; compare Philippians 3:2; Revelation 22:15.)
The word dog was in fact sometimes a Jewish term of contempt for
the Gentiles. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi had a parable. He saw the blessings
of God which the Gentiles enjoy; he asked, "If the Gentiles without the
law enjoy blessings like that, how many more blessings will Israel, the
people of God, enjoy?" "It is like a king who made a feast and brought
in the guests and placed them at the door of his palace. They saw the
dogs come out, with pheasants, and heads of fatted birds, and calves in
their mouths. Then the guests began to say, 'If it be thus with the
dogs, how much more luxurious will the meal itself be.' And the nations
of the world are compared to dogs, as it is said (Isaiah 56:11), 'The dogs have a mighty appetite'."
No matter how you look at it, the term dog is an insult. How, then, are we to explain Jesus' use of it here?
(a) He did not use the usual word; he used a diminutive word
which described, not the wild dogs of the streets, but the little pet
lap-dogs of the house. In Greek, diminutives are characteristically
affectionate. Jesus took the sting out of the word.
(b) Without a doubt his tone of voice made all the difference.
The same word can be a deadly insult and an affectionate address,
according to the tone of voice. We can call a man "an old rascal" in a
voice of contempt or a voice of affection. Jesus' tone took all the
poison out of the word.
(c) In any event Jesus did not shut the door. First, he said,
the children must be fed; but only first; there is meat left for the
household pets. True, Israel had the first offer of the gospel, but only
the first; there were others still to come. The woman was a Greek, and
the Greeks had a gift of repartee; and she saw at once that Jesus was
speaking with a smile. She knew that the door was swinging on its
hinges. In those days people did not have either knives or forks or
table-napkins. They ate with their hands; they wiped the soiled hands on
chunks of bread and then flung the bread away and the house-dogs ate
it. So the woman said, "I know the children are fed first, but can't I
even get the scraps the children throw away?" And Jesus loved it. Here
was a sunny faith that would not take no for an answer, here was a woman
with the tragedy of an ill daughter at home, and there was still light
enough in her heart to reply with a smile. Her faith was tested and her
faith was real, and her prayer was answered. Symbolically she stands for
the Gentile world which so eagerly seized on the bread of heaven which
the Jews rejected and threw away.
7:31-37 He went away
again from the regions of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of
Galilee, through the regions of the Decapolis. They brought to him a man
who was deaf and who had an impediment in his speech, and they asked
him to lay his hands on him. He took him aside from the crowd all by
himself. He thrust his fingers into his ears, and spat, and touched his
tongue. Then he looked up into heaven, and sighed, and said to him,
"Ephphatha!" which means, "Be opened!" And his ears were opened, and the
bond which held his tongue was loosed, and he spoke correctly. He
enjoined them to tell no one; but the more he enjoined them the more
exceedingly they proclaimed the story of what he had done. They were all
amazed beyond measure. "He has done all things well," they said. And he
made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.
This story begins by describing what is on the face of it an
amazing journey. Jesus was going from Tyre to the territory around the
Sea of Galilee. He was going from Tyre in the north to Galilee in the
south; and he started by going to Sidon. That is to say, he started
going due south by going due north! As one scholar has put it, it would
be like going from London to Cornwall via Manchester; or like going from
Glasgow to Edinburgh via Perth.
Because of that difficulty some have thought that the text is
wrong and that Sidon should not enter into it at all. But almost
certainly the text is correct as it stands. Another thinks that this
journey took no less than eight months, and that, indeed, is far more
likely.
It may well be that this long journey is the peace before the
storm; a long communion with the disciples before the final tempest
breaks. In the very next chapter Peter makes the great discovery that
Jesus is the Christ (Mark 8:27-29),
and it may well be that it was in this long, lonely time together that
this impression became a certainty in Peter's heart. Jesus needed this
long time with his men before the strain and tension of the approaching
end.
When Jesus did arrive back in the regions of Galilee, he came
into the district of the Decapolis, and there they brought to him a man
who was deaf and who had an impediment in his speech. As Tyndale vividly
translates it the man was "deffe and stambed in his speech." No doubt
the two things went together; it was the man's inability to hear which
made his speech so imperfect. There is no miracle which so beautifully
shows Jesus' way of treating people.
(i) He took the man aside from the crowd, all by himself. Here
is the most tender considerateness. Deaf folk are always a little
embarrassed. In some ways it is more embarrassing to be deaf than it is
to be blind. A deaf person knows he cannot hear; and when someone in a
crowd shouts at him and tries to make him hear, in his excitement he
becomes all the more helpless. Jesus showed the most tender
consideration for the feelings of a man for whom life was very
difficult.
(ii) Throughout the whole miracle Jesus acted what he was going
to do in dumb-show. He put his hands in the man's ears and touched his
tongue with spittle. In those days people believed that spittle had a
curative quality. Suetonius, the Roman historian, tells of an incident
in the life of Vespasian, the Emperor. "It fortuned that a certain mean
commoner stark-blind, another likewise with a feeble and lame leg, came
together unto him as he sat upon his tribunal, craving that help and
remedy for their infirmities which had been shown unto them by Serapis
in their dreams; that he should restore the one to his sight, if he did
but spit into his eyes, and strengthen the other's leg, if he vouchsafed
only to touch it with his heel. Now when as he could hardly believe
that the thing any way would find success and speed accordingly, and
therefore durst not so much as put it to the venture, at the last,
through the persuasion of his friends, openly before the assembly he
assayed both means, neither missed he of the effect." (Suetonius, Life
of Vespasian 7. Holland's translation.) Jesus looked up to heaven to
show that it was from God that help was to come. Then he spoke the word
and the man was healed.
The whole story shows us most vividly that Jesus did not
consider the man merely a case; he considered him as an individual the
man had a special need and a special problem, and with the most tender
considerateness Jesus dealt with him in a way that spared his feelings
and in a way that he could understand.
When it was completed the people declared that he had done all
things well. That is none other than the verdict of God upon his own
creation in the very beginning (Genesis 1:31).
When Jesus came, bringing healing to men's bodies and salvation to
their souls, he had begun the work of creation all over again. In the
beginning everything had been good; man's sin had spoiled it all; and
now Jesus was bringing back the beauty of God to the world which man's
sin had rendered ugly.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)