Mark 7

Tradition vs. the heart, the Syrophoenician woman, healing the deaf-mute.

The Pharisees and scribes question Jesus about His disciples eating with unwashed hands. Jesus rebukes them sharply with Isaiah's prophecy: "This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me." He teaches that defilement comes from within — from evil thoughts, adulteries, thefts, pride, foolishness — not from external things. Crossing into Tyre and Sidon, Jesus encounters a Syrophoenician (Gentile) woman whose daughter is demon-possessed. Her humble, persistent faith — "Yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs" — earns her daughter's deliverance. Back in the region of Decapolis, Jesus heals a deaf man with a speech impediment, putting His fingers in his ears and saying "Ephphatha" — "Be opened."