Dog Scraps

Jesus went to the district of Tyre. He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it, but he could not escape notice. Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him. She came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” 

She replied and said to him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. (Mark 7:24-30)

What a reading!  Why would Jesus call this Greek woman a “dog?”  The word “dog” was sometimes used as a Jewish term of contempt for Gentiles, and the woman was a Gentile.  “Do not give to dogs what is holy” is found in Matthew (7:6); Philippians (3:2); and Revelation (22:15).  To the Greek the word “dog” meant a shameless and audacious woman used with a connotation similar to use of the word “bitch.” The nations of the world were compared to dogs as in Isaiah (56:11): “The dogs have a mighty appetite.”

Because Mark has Jesus going to the Gentile city of Tyre, perhaps this reading is symbolically indicating that Jesus is wiping out the distinction between clean and unclean people, especially because Jesus drove out the demon in the unclean (Gentile) daughter.  

Importantly, Jesus did not say they could not be fed.  The “children” had to be fed first.  The children would have been those of Israel.  Then the Gentiles – the unclean – would be fed and welcomed into the ranks of those following Jesus, the Jew.  They would all follow his Way.

Deacon David Pierce