Chapter 7

Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes, who had come from Jerusalem, gathered round him;

and these found fault, because they saw that some of his disciples sat down to eat with their hands defiled, that is, unwashed.

For the Pharisees, and indeed all the Jews, holding to the tradition of their ancestors, never eat without washing their hands again and again;

they will not sit down to meat, coming from the market, without thorough cleansing; and there are many other customs which they hold to by tradition, purifying of cups and pitchers and pans and beds.

So the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why do thy disciples eat with defiled hands, instead of following the tradition of our ancestors?

But he answered, You hypocrites, it was a true prophecy Isaias made of you, writing as he did, This people does me honour with its lips, but its heart is far from me;

their worship of me is vain, for the doctrines they teach are the commandments of men.

You leave God’s commandment on one side, and hold to the tradition of man, the purifying of pitchers and cups, and many other like observances.

And he told them, You have quite defeated God’s commandment, to establish your own tradition instead.

Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother, and, He who curses father or mother dies without hope of reprieve.

But you say, Let a man tell his father or his mother, All the money out of which you might get help from me is now Corban (that is, an offering to God),

and then you will not let him do any more for father or mother.

With this and many like observances, you are making God’s law ineffectual through the tradition you have handed down.

And he called the multitude to him, and said to them, Listen to me, all of you, and grasp this;

Nothing that finds its way into a man from outside can make him unclean; what makes a man unclean is what comes out of a man.

Listen, you that have ears to hear with.

When he had gone into the house, away from the multitude, his disciples asked him the meaning of the parable.

And he said to them, Are you still so slow of wit? Do you not observe that all the uncleanness which goes into a man has no means of defiling him,

because it travels, not into his heart, but into the belly, and so finds its way into the sewer? Thus he declared all meat to be clean,

and told them that what defiles a man is that which comes out of him.

For it is from within, from the hearts of men, that their wicked designs come, their sins of adultery, fornication, murder,

theft, covetousness, malice, deceit, lasciviousness, envy, blasphemy, pride and folly.

All these evils come from within, and it is these which make a man unclean.

After this, Jesus left those parts, and withdrew into the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon. There he went into a house, and did not wish anyone to know of it; but he could not go unrecognized,

for a woman came to hear of it, whose daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, and she came in and fell at his feet.

This woman was a Gentile, a Syrophenician by race, and she begged him to cast the devil out of her daughter.

But he said to her, Let the children have their fill first; it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.

She answered him, Ah, yes, Lord; the dogs eat of the crumbs the children leave, underneath the table.

And he said to her, In reward for this word of thine, back home with thee; the devil has left thy daughter.

And when she came back to her house, she found her daughter lying on the bed, and the devil gone.

Then he set out again from the region of Tyre, and came by way of Sidon to the sea of Galilee, right into the region of Decapolis.

And they brought to him a man who was deaf and dumb, with the prayer that he would lay his hand upon him.

And he took him aside out of the multitude; he put his fingers into his ears, and spat, and touched his tongue;

then he looked up to heaven, and sighed; Ephpheta, he said, (that is, Be opened).

Whereupon his ears were opened, and the bond which tied his tongue was loosed, and he talked plainly.

And he laid a strict charge on them, not to speak of it to anyone; but the more he charged them, the more widely they published it,

and were more than ever astonished; He has done well, they said, in all his doings; he has made the deaf hear, and the dumb speak.