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21 Jesus left there and went to the territory of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that region came to him and cried out saying, “Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David! My daughter is possessed by a demon.” 23 But he did not say one word to her in reply. The disciples said, “Send her away, because she keeps crying out behind us.” 24 He said to her, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” 25 The woman came forward and knelt down before him, saying, “Lord, help me!” 26 He said in reply, “It is not right to take bread from children and throw it to dogs.” 27 She said, “But Lord, even dogs get to eat the scraps that fall from their owners’ tables.” 28 The Jesus said to her, “Woman, great is your faith. What you want, let it happen for you.” At that hour her daughter was healed.

Comments

Jesus enters the region around the cities of Tyre and Sidon, roughly corresponding to modern day Lebanon. This is the land of the Phoenicians, a Semitic polytheistic people whom Matthew refers to using the archaic term Canaanite. Jesus is opening a new arena for his ministry by entering a Gentile land.

A local woman approaches Jesus, asking him to heal her daughter. Jesus replies that he has only been sent to help the people of Israel, but the woman persists and follows after him, begging him from a distance. Perhaps she intuited that what Jesus said was not the whole story: He did, after all, choose to travel into Gentile territory. When he compares helping a Gentile to taking bread from children and throwing it to dogs, she replies that even dogs get to eat scraps the children drop. Jesus, impressed, praises her for her great the faith (note the contrast with Peter in 14.31) and grants her request.

This is a confronting and confusing story. In the end, Jesus did help the woman. He had traveled to the territory of Tyre and Sidon, so he was presumably expecting an encounter with someone like her. So why did he make her convince him? Why did he speak so disrespectfully to her, comparing her people to dogs? The truth is we simply do not know (or at least I do not know). But we can see that this story is part of the arc of Jesus opening up his ministry to Gentiles. Prior to this, he had set aside the dietary regulations that formed a barrier between Jews and Gentiles. After this, he will help thousands more Gentiles on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.