THE SICK DAUGHTER OF THE SYROPHOENICIAN WOMAN - Year Three - c AD29-30

(Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30)

- The woman is a Gentile Canaanite living in the Phoenician part of Syria - present day Lebanon. This is another difficult account to understand. First Jesus says the Gospel is only for the Jews - the "lost sheep of the house of Israel". Then, in using the term "dogs" to refer to Gentiles, he is being uncharacteristically unkind.
The term "dogs" is believed to have been meant in the more gentle form of domestic "young puppies". But whatever the actual incident, or how it is reported, Jesus did not refuse her request, and her daughter was healed. And later in the early Church, it is the Gentiles who become the main beneficiaries of the Gospel of Jesus:

Matthew 15:21-28 - Jesus left that place (the Galilee region after clashing with the scribes and Pharisees about what really makes a person clean) and retired into the Tyre and Sidon district. There a Canaanite woman from those parts came to him crying at the top of her voice, "Lord, have pity on me! My daughter is in a terrible state - a devil has got into her!"
Jesus made no answer, and the disciples came up to him and said, "Do send her away - she's still following us and calling out."
"I was only sent," replied Jesus, "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Then the woman came and knelt at his feet. "Lord, help me," she said.
"It is not right, you know," Jesus replied, "to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
"Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs live on the scraps that fall from their master's table!"
"You certainly don't lack faith," returned Jesus, "it shall be as you wish."
And at that moment her daughter was cured.
Mark 7:24-30 - Then (as in Matthew's account) he got up and left that place and went off to the neighbourhood of Tyre. There he went into a house and wanted no one to know where he was. But it proved impossible to remain hidden. For no sooner had he got there, than a woman who had heard about him, and who had a daughter possessed by an evil spirit, arrived and prostrated herself before him. She was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she asked him to drive the evil spirit out of her daughter. Jesus said to her, "You must let the children have all they want first. It is not right, you know, to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
But she replied, "Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under the table eat what the children leave."
"If you can answer like that," Jesus said to her, "you can go home! The evil spirit has left your daughter."
And she went back home and found the child lying quietly on her bed, and the evil spirit gone.