Healing the Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter #25

The healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, also called the story of the Canaanite woman, describes Jesus casting an unclean spirit out of a young girl without ever seeing her. A Gentile mother approaches him in the region of Tyre and Sidon, is met with an apparent refusal, and persists until Jesus grants her request. The account appears in Matthew and Mark.

The Account

Both Gospels say Jesus withdrew from Galilee into the territory around Tyre (Matthew adds Sidon). In Mark he enters a house and does not want anyone to know, yet he cannot remain hidden (Mark 7:24). A woman whose little daughter has an unclean spirit comes and falls at his feet. Mark identifies her as a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth (Mark 7:26). Matthew calls her a Canaanite woman and has her cry out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” (Matthew 15:22).

The exchange that follows is among the most discussed in the Gospels. In Matthew, Jesus at first does not answer, the disciples urge him to send her away, and he says he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:23-24). When she kneels and says, “Lord, help me,” he replies that it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs (Matthew 15:25-26). Mark has him say the children should be fed first (Mark 7:27). She answers that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. Many commentators note that the Greek word used is a diminutive, closer to household dogs or puppies.

Jesus responds by commending her. In Matthew he says, “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt” (Matthew 15:28). In Mark he tells her that because of this statement the demon has left her daughter, and she returns home to find the child lying on the bed, the demon gone (Mark 7:29-30).

Setting and Context

Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician coastal cities outside Jewish territory, so this is one of the few places where Jesus’s ministry moves into predominantly Gentile land. Mark places the event immediately after a dispute over ritual purity and immediately before a healing in the Decapolis (Mark 7:1-23, 31-37). Matthew’s version stresses Jesus’s mission to Israel first, which sets up the tension in the conversation.

What It Reveals

The story shows a persistent faith that will not be turned aside. Matthew emphasizes it by using the phrase “great faith,” which he also uses of the centurion in Matthew 8:10. Interpreters differ on how to read Jesus’s initial reluctance. Some see a test that draws out the woman’s faith, others see Jesus working through the priority of Israel in salvation history, and others point to a real development in the scene that anticipates the later mission to the Gentiles. All agree the outcome shows that God’s mercy reaches beyond the boundaries of the people of Israel, and that the healing takes place at a distance, by Jesus’s word alone.