Mark 7:17-37
7:17 Now when Jesus had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable.
7:18 He said to them, “Are you so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him?
7:19 For it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and then goes out into the sewer.” (This means all foods are clean.)
7:20 He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him.
7:21 For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder,
7:22 adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly.
7:23 All these evils come from within and defile a person.”
A Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith
7:24 After Jesus left there, he went to the region of Tyre. When he went into a house, he did not want anyone to know, but he was not able to escape notice.
7:25 Instead, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him and came and fell at his feet.
7:26 The woman was a Greek, of Syrophoenician origin. She asked him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
7:27 He said to her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and to throw it to the dogs.”
7:28 She answered, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
7:29 Then he said to her, “Because you said this, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.”
7:30 She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Healing a Deaf Mute
7:31 Then Jesus went out again from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis.
7:32 They brought to him a deaf man who had difficulty speaking, and they asked him to place his hands on him.
7:33 After Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, he put his fingers in the man’s ears, and after spitting, he touched his tongue.
7:34 Then he looked up to heaven and said with a sigh, “Ephphatha” (that is, “Be opened”).
7:35 And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his tongue loosened, and he spoke plainly.
7:36 Jesus ordered them not to tell anything. But as much as he ordered them not to do this, they proclaimed it all the more.
7:37 People were completely astounded and said, “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”