'Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts
of Tyre and Sidon. 22. And, behold, a woman of Canaan
came out of the same coasts, and cried unto Him,
saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my
daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. 23. But He
answered her not a word. And His disciples came and
besought Him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth
after us. 24. But He answered and said, I am not sent
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
25. Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, Lord,
help me. 26. But He answered and said, It is not meet
to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
27. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the
crumbs which fall from their masters' table. 28. Then
Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy
faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her
daughter was made whole from that very hour. 29. And
Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea
of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down
there. 30. And great multitudes came unto Him, having
with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed,
and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet;
and He healed them: 31. Insomuch that the multitude
wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed
to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see:
and they glorified the God of Israel.'--MATT. xv. 21-31.
The King of Israel has passed beyond the bounds of Israel, driven by
the hostility of those who should have been His subjects. The
delegates of the priestly party from Jerusalem, who had come down to
see into this dangerous enthusiasm which was beginning in Galilee,
have made Christ's withdrawal expedient, and He goes northward, if
not actually into the territory of Tyre and Sidon, at any rate to
the border land. The incident of the Syro-Phoenician woman becomes
more striking if we suppose that it took place on Gentile ground. At
all events, after it, we learn from Mark that He made a considerable
circuit, first north and then east, and so came round to the eastern
side of the sea of Galilee, where the last paragraph of this section
finds Him. The key to its meaning lies in the contrast between the
single cure of the woman's demoniac daughter, obtained after so long
imploring, and the spontaneous abundance of the cures wrought when
Jesus again had Jewish sufferers to do with, even though it were on
the half-Gentilised eastern shore of the lake. The contrast is an
illustration of His parable of the crumbs that fell from the table
and the plentiful feast that was spread upon it for the children.
The story of the Syro-Phoenician woman naturally falls into four
parts, each marked by the recurrence of 'He answered.'
I. There is the piteous cry, and the answer of silence. Mark tells
us that Jesus sought concealment in this journey; but distress has
quick eyes, and this poor woman found Him. Canaanite as she is, and
thus a descendant of the ancient race of Israel's enemies, she has
learned to call Him the Son of David, owning His kingship, which His
born subjects disowned. She beseeches for that which He delights to
give, identifying herself with her poor child's suffering, and
asking as for herself His mercy. As Chrysostom says: 'It was a sight
to stir pity to behold a woman calling aloud in such distress, and
that woman a mother, and pleading for a daughter, and that daughter
in such evil plight.' In her humility she does not bring her child,
nor ask Him to go to her. In her agony, she has nothing to say but
to spread her grief before Him, as thinking that He, of whose pity
she has heard, needs but to know in order to alleviate, and requires
no motives urged to induce Him to help. In her faith, she thinks
that His power can heal from afar. What more could He have desired?
All the more startling, then, is His demeanour. All the conditions
which He usually required, were present in her; but He, who was wont
to meet these with swift and joyful over-answers, has no word to say
to this poor, needy, persevering, humble, and faithful suppliant.
The fountain seems frozen, from which such streams of blessing were
wont to flow. His mercy seems clean gone, and His compassion to have
failed. A Christ silent to a sufferer's cry is a paradox which
contradicts the whole gospel story, and which, we may be very sure,
no evangelist would have painted, if he had not been painting from
the life.
II. There is the disciples' intercession answered by Christ's
statement of the limitations of His mission. Their petition
evidently meant, 'Dismiss her by granting her request'; they knew in
what fashion He was wont to 'send away' such suppliants. They seem,
then, more pitiful than He is. But their thoughts are more for
themselves than for her. That 'us' shows the cloven foot. They did
not like the noise, and they feared it might defeat His purpose of
secrecy; and so, by their phrase, 'Send her away,' they
unconsciously betray that what they wanted was not granting the
prayer, but getting rid of the petitioner. Perhaps, too, they mean,
'Say something to her; either tell her that Thou wilt or that Thou
wilt not; break Thy silence somehow.' No doubt, it was intensely
disagreeable to have a shrieking woman coming after them; and they
were only doing as most of us would have done, and as so many of us
do, when we give help without one touch of compassion, in order to
stop some imploring mouth.
Their apparently compassionate but really selfish intercession was
put aside by the answer, which explains the paradox of His silence.
It puts emphasis on two things: His subordination to the divine will
of the Father, and the restrictions imposed thereby on the scope of
His beneficent working. He was obeying the divine will in confining
His ministry to the Jewish people, as we know that He did. Clearly,
that restriction was necessary. It was a case of concentration in
order to diffusion. The fire must be gathered on the hearth, if it
is afterward to warm the chamber. There must be geographical and
national limits to His life; and the Messiah, who comes last in the
long series of the kings and prophets, can only be authenticated as
the world's Messiah, by being first the fulfiller to the children of
the promises made to the fathers. The same necessity, which required
that revelation should be made through that nation, required that
the climax and fulfiller of all revelation should limit His earthly
ministry to it. This limitation must be regarded as applying only to
His own personal ministry. It did not limit His sympathies, nor
interfere with His consciousness of being the Saviour and King of
the whole world. He had already spoken the parables which claimed it
all for the area of the development of His kingdom, and in many
other ways had given utterance to His consciousness of universal
dominion, and His purpose of universal mercy. But He knew that there
was an order of development in the kingdom, and that at its then
stage the surest way to attain the ultimate universality was rigid
limitation of it to the chosen people. This conviction locked His
gracious lips against even this poor woman's piteous cry. We may
well believe that His sympathy outran His commission, and that it
would have been hard for so much love to be silent in the presence
of so much sorrow, if He had not felt the solemn pressure of that
divine necessity which ruled all His life. He was bound by His
instructions, and therefore He answered her not a word. Individual
suffering is no reason for transcending the limits of God-appointed
functions; and he is absolved from the charge of indifference who
refrains from giving help, which he can only give by overleaping the
bounds of his activity, which have been set by the Father.
III. We have, next, the persistent suppliant answered by a refusal
which sounds harsh and hopeless. Christ's former words were probably
not heard by the woman, who seems to have been behind the group. She
saw that something was being said to Him, and may have gathered,
from gestures or looks, that His reply was unfavourable. Perhaps
there was a short pause in their walk, while they spoke, during
which she came nearer. Now she falls at His feet, and with
'beautiful shamelessness,' as Chrysostom calls it, repeats her
prayer, but this time with pathetic brevity, uttering but the one
cry, 'Lord, help me!' The intenser the feeling, the fewer the words.
Heart-prayers are short prayers. She does not now invoke Him as the
Son of David, nor tell her sorrow over again, but flings herself in
desperation on His pity, with the artless and unsupported cry, wrung
from her agony, as she sees the hope of help fading away. Like
Jacob, in his mysterious struggle, 'she wept, and made supplication
unto Him.'
As it would seem, her distress touched no chord of sympathy; and
from the lips accustomed to drop oil and wine into every wound, came
words like swords, cold, unfeeling, keen-edged, fitted and meant to
lacerate. We shall not understand them, or Him, if we content
ourselves with the explanation which jealousy for His honour as
compassionate and tender has led many to adopt, that He meant all
the long delay in granting her request, and the words which He
spoke, only as tests of her faith. His refusal was a real refusal,
founded on the divine decree, which He was bound to obey. His words
to her, harsh as they unquestionably sound, are but another way of
putting the limitation on which He had just insisted in His answer
to the disciples. The 'bread' is the blessing which He, as the sent
of God, brings; the 'children' are the 'lost sheep of the house of
Israel'; the 'dogs' are the Gentile world. The meaning of the whole
is simply the necessary restriction of His personal activity to the
chosen nation. It is not meant to wound nor to insult, though, no
doubt, it is cast in a form which might have been offensive, and
would have repelled a less determined or less sorrowful heart. The
form may be partly explained by the intention of trying her
earnestness, which, though it is not the sole, or even the
principal, is a subordinate, reason of our Lord's action. But it is
also to be considered in the light of the woman's quick-witted
retort, which drew out of it an inference which we cannot suppose
that Christ did not intend. He uses a diminutive for 'dogs,' which
shows that He is not thinking of the fierce, unclean animals,
masterless and starving, that still haunt Eastern cities, and
deserve their bad character, but of domestic pets, who live with the
household, and are near the table. In fact, the woman seized His
intention much better than later critics who find 'national scorn'
in the words; and the fair inference from them is just that which
she drew, and which constituted the law of the preaching of the
Gospel,--'To the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.'
IV. We have the woman's retort, which wrings hope out of apparent
discouragement, answered by Christ's joyful granting of her request.
Out of His very words she weaves a plea. 'Yes, Lord; I am one of the
dogs; then I am not an alien, but belong to the household.' The
Revised Version does justice to her words by reading 'for even'
instead of 'yet,' She does not enter a caveat against the analogy,
but accepts it wholly, and only asks Him to carry out His own
metaphor. She takes the sword from His hand, or, as Luther says,
'she catches Him in His own words.' She does not ask a place at the
table, nor anything taken from those who have a prior claim to a
more abundant share in His mercies. A crumb is enough for her, which
they will never miss. In other and colder words, she acquiesces in
the divine appointment which limits His mission to Israel; but she
recognises that all nations belong to God's household, and that she
and her countrymen have a real, though for the time inferior,
position in it. She pleads that her gain will not be the children's
loss, nor the answer to her prayers an infraction of the spirit of
His mission. Perhaps, too, there may be a reference to the fact of
His being there on Gentile soil, in her words, 'Which fall from the
children's table.' She does not want the bread to be thrown from the
table to her. She is not asking Him to transfer His ministry to
Gentiles; but here He is. A crumb has fallen, in His brief visit.
May she not eat of that? In this answer faith, humility,
perseverance, swift perception of His meaning, and hallowed
ingenuity and boldness, are equally admirable. By admitting that she
was 'a dog,' and pleading her claim on that footing, she shows that
she was 'a child.' And therefore, because she has shown herself one
of the true household, in the fixedness of her faith, in the
meekness of her humility, in the persistence of her prayers, Christ
joyfully recognises that here is a case in which He may pass the
line of ordinary limitation, and that, in doing so, He does not
exceed His commission. Such faith is entitled to the fullest share
of His gift. She takes her place beside the Gentile centurion as the
two recipients of commendation from Him for the greatness of their
faith. It had seemed as if He would give nothing; but He ends with
giving all, putting the key of the storehouse into her hand, and
bidding her take, not a crumb, but 'as thou wilt.' Her daughter is
healed, by His power working at a distance; but that was not, we may
be very sure, the last nor the best of the blessings which she took
from that great treasure of which He made her mistress. Nor can we
doubt that He rejoiced at the removal of the barrier which dammed
back His help, as much as she did at the abundance of the stream
which reached her at last.
V. The final verses of our lesson give us a striking contrast to
this story. Jesus is again on the shores of the lake, after a tour
through the Tyrian and Sidonian territory, and then eastwards and
southwards, to its eastern bank. There He, as on several former
occasions, seeks seclusion and repose in the hills, which is broken
in upon by the crowds. The old excitement and rush of people begin
again. And large numbers of sick, 'lame, blind, dumb, maimed and
many others,' are brought. They are cast 'down at His feet' in hot
haste, with small ceremony, and, as would appear, with little
petitioning for His healing power. But the same grace, for which the
Canaanitish woman had needed to plead so hard, now seems to flow
almost unasked. She had, as it were, wrung a drop out; now it gushes
abundantly. She had not got her 'crumb' without much pleading; these
get the bread almost without asking. It is this contrast of scant
and full supplies which the evangelist would have us observe. And he
points his meaning plainly enough by that expression, 'they
glorified the God of Israel,' which seems to be Matthew's own, and
not his quotation of what the crowd said. This abundance of miracle
witnesses to the pre-eminence of Israel over the Gentile nations,
and to the special revelation of Himself which God made to them in
His Son. The crowd may have found in it only fuel for narrow
national pride and contempt; but it was the divine method for the
founding of the kingdom none the less; and these two scenes, set
thus side by side, teach the same truth, that the King of men is
first the King of Israel.