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!”