< Mark 7 >
1 One day the Pharisees came to him in a body with some Scribes who had come from Jerusalem.
2 They had noticed that some of his disciples were eating with "common," that is to say, unwashed hands.
3 For the Pharisees and all of the Jews do not eat until they have ceremoniously washed their hands in obedience to the tradition of the elders;
4 and when they come from the market-place they do not eat without bathing first. and they have many other customs which they have received and observe, such as the washing of cups and jugs and copper pans.
5 So the Pharisees and Scribes asked him. "Why do your disciples not follow the traditions of the elders? Why do they eat with ‘common’ unwashed hands?"
6 "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, hypocrites," he answered. "As it is written, "This people honor me with their lips, While their hearts are far from me;
7 But in vain do they worship me, For their teaching is only human precepts.
8 "You neglect the commandment of God, and hold fast the traditions of men."
9 "It is praiseworthy, is it," he exclaimed, "to reject the command of God that you may keep your tradition!
10 For although Moses said, Honor your father and mother, and Let him who curses father or mother suffer death,
11 you say that if a man tells his father or mother, ‘This money which otherwise you would have received from me, is Korban’ (that is, a thing devoted to God),
12 you exempt him from doing any service for his father or mother.
13 Thus by your tradition which you have handed down you set at naught the word of God; and you do many other things like that."
14 Then again he called the crowd to him and said.
15 "Listen to me, all of you, and understand; there is nothing outside a man which by entering in can defile him; but it is what comes from him that defiled him."
16
17 After he had left the crowd and gone indoors his disciples began asking him about the parable.
18 "Are even you without understanding?" he said. "Do you not perceive that nothing whatever from without can defile a man by entering him,
19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his belly, and passes away, ejected from him?" By these words he pronounced all foods clean.
20 "What comes out of a man," he continued, "is what defiles him.
21 From within, from the heart of man, proceed evil purposes -
22 fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, wantonness, envy, slander, arrogance, reckless folly -
23 all these wicked things issue from within and defile a man."
24 After he rose and left that place, he went away into the region of Tyre and Sidon. Here he went into a house and wished no one to know it but he could not be hid.
25 Forthwith a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet
26 (the woman was a Greek, a Syro-phoenician by race), and again and again she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
27 "Let the children be filled first," he said to her. "It is unseemly to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs."
28 "True, Master," she answered, "but the dogs under the table do pick up the children’s crumbs."
29 "For that saying of yours, go home," he replied; "the demon has departed from your daughter."
30 So she went home, and found the child lying in her bed and the demon departed.
31 Again he left the region of Tyre, and passed through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, crossing the District of the Ten Towns.
32 And they brought to him a deaf man who stammered, and begged him to lay his hands upon him.
33 So Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and put his finger in the man’s ears, and moistened his tongue with saliva;
34 then looking up to heaven with a sigh, he said to him, "Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened.")
35 And his ears were opened and the bond of his tongue was loosened, and he spoke plainly.
36 Then Jesus charged them not to tell any one, but the more he charged them, the more they published it;
37 and people were amazed beyond measure saying. "How successfully he does things! Even the deaf he makes to hear, and the dumb to speak."
