7
“It Is What Comes Out of a Person That Makes Him Unclean”
1 When the Pharisees and some of the Torah-experts who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus,+
2 they noticed how some of his disciples were eating their bread: With ritually unclean—that is, unwashed—hands.
3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews, you see, will eat only+ if they have washed their hands up to the wrist,+ thus adhering to the oral tradition handed down through generations of rabbis.+
4 Similarly, when they come from the market area, they will eat only if they have performed a ritual washing.+ And there are indeed many, many other traditions+ that they have received and to which they adhere,+ like the ritual washing+ of cups and pitchers and copper vessels and the couches on which people recline at meals.+)
5 So the Pharisees and the Torah-experts asked him, “Why do your disciples not conduct themselves according to the oral tradition handed down to us through the rabbis+? Instead, they eat their food+ with unclean hands.”
6 “Isaiah was fully accurate when he prophesied about you hypocrites,” Jesus+ said to them. “As it is written,
“ ‘As for this people, it is with their lips that they honor me.
Their hearts, though, are far, far away from me.
7 Their worship of me is completely futile,
for they teach as doctrines precepts concocted by mere men.’+
8 Having forsaken the commandment of God, ᵖyou adhere to the tradition of men.”
9 He also said to them, “ᵖYou are so skillful at rejecting+ the commandment of God so that you can set up ᵖyour own tradition.+
10 Moses, for example, said, ‘Honor ˢyour father and your mother,’+ and, ‘Anyone who curses father or mother must surely be put to death.’+
11 ᵖYou, however, say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever help ˢyou would have received from me is now this—Corban” ’ (“Corban” refers to something that a person irrevocably commits to give to the temple at a later time, but which is still his to use until then+)—
12 ᵖyou are no longer allowing him to do anything for his father or mother.
13 And so you undermine the authority of the word of God by means of ᵖyour tradition that you have handed down. And ᵖyou do, too, many other things very similar to this.”
14 Then he called the crowd over to himself again and said to them, “All of you listen to me and understand this:
15 There is nothing outside a person that, by going into him, is able to make him unclean. No, it is the things that come out of a person that make him unclean.”+
17 When Jesus+ went into the house away from the crowds, his disciples began asking him about the parable.
18 “Like the crowd,+ do ᵖyou disciples,+ too, yourselves still not understand?” he asked them. “Surely ᵖyou realize, don’t you, that anything that goes into a person from the outside is unable to make him unclean,
19 since it goes not into his heart, but into his stomach, and then on out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods ritually clean.)
20 He continued, “It is what comes out of a person that makes him unclean.
21 From within, you see, from people’s hearts, come their evil plans+—acts of sexual immorality, acts of theft, acts of murder,
22 acts of adultery, acts of greed, acts of wickedness, deceit, licentious behavior, selfishness and envy,+ blasphemy,+ pride, and folly.
23 All these wicked things come from where? From within. And they make a person unclean.”
“A Woman Whose Young Daughter Had an Unclean Spirit Came and Threw Herself Down at His Feet”
24 From there Jesus+ set out and went away to the territory of Tyre. When he went into a house, he didn’t want anyone to know he was there, yet he was unable to escape notice.
25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit came and threw herself down at his feet.
26 Now the woman was non-Jewish,+ of Syrophoenician origin.+ She kept asking Jesus+ to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 “Let the children be fed first,”+ he said to her, “for it isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
28 “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat some of the children’s crumbs.”
29 “Because of this answer,+” Jesus+ said to her, “you may go on home. The demon has left your daughter.”
30 And when the woman+ went back home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
“He Has Done Everything Well!”
31 When Jesus+ returned from the region of Tyre, he came by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the ten Greek cities east of the Jordan.+
32 Some people+ brought to him a man who was deaf and who could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man.+
33 When Jesus+ had taken the man+ away from the crowd and off to the side privately,+ he placed his fingers in the man’s+ ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue.
34 Then looking up into the sky,+ Jesus+ groaned+ and said to the man,+ “Ephphatha” (which means, “Be opened”).
35 And instantly the man’s+ ears were opened and his tongue set free,+ and he began talking normally.
36 Jesus+ gave the people+ strict orders not to tell anyone about this. Yet the more he gave them these orders, the more and more they themselves did just the opposite.+
37 They were completely and utterly astonished. “He has done everything well!” they said. “The deaf he causes to hear, and to those who can’t talk he gives speech!”