Mark 7
Mark 7 opens with a complaint dressed up as a question. Pharisees and scribes have come down from Jerusalem, and they notice that some of Jesus' disciples eat with unwashen hands - not a matter of hygiene but of ritual, of the elaborate purity customs that had grown up around the Law. Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders? (v. 5). Jesus does not defend the disciples' manners; He goes after the assumption underneath the question, and He goes after it from Isaiah: This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men (vv. 6-7). The charge is severe and exact - they have let human tradition climb up over the command of God, even to the point where a clever vow could be used to deny aging parents the support they were owed: making the word of God of none effect through your tradition (v. 13).3
Then Jesus calls the crowd and resets the whole question of clean and unclean: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man (v. 15). Defilement is not a matter of what touches the body or passes through it; it wells up from the heart. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders - and on the list runs, until He names the true source of every uncleanness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man (vv. 21-23). The problem is not out in the world to be kept at arm's length; it is inside, and no washing of hands can reach it.
From that teaching the chapter turns to two acts of mercy that cross the very lines the opening dispute had assumed. Jesus withdraws to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and a Greek woman - a Syrophenician by nation - falls at His feet for her demon-troubled daughter. He meets her first with a hard saying about the children's bread, and she answers with a humility and faith that will not let go: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs (v. 28). The girl is freed. Then, back near the sea of Galilee, they bring Him a man who is deaf and can barely speak. Jesus takes him aside, touches his ears and tongue, looks up to heaven with a sigh, and speaks one word in His own tongue: Ephphatha, that is, Be opened (v. 34). The ears open, the tongue is loosed, and the astonished crowd gives the verdict the whole chapter has been building toward: He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak (v. 37).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Mark 7:1-13Their Heart Is Far From Me
1Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. 2And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. 3For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. 4And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. 5Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? 6He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 8For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. 9Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 11But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. 12And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; 13Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
The scene is set with care. The Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem (v. 1) - this is no chance encounter but a delegation from the capital, come to scrutinize the Galilean teacher. What they catch is small: some of His disciples eating with unwashen hands (v. 2), and at this they found fault. Mark, writing for readers outside Judea, pauses to explain the custom - the washing of hands, of cups and pots and vessels, kept oft and after the market, all holding the tradition of the elders (vv. 3-4). It is important to see clearly what is and is not at stake. The Law of Moses commanded ritual washings for the priests and for certain defilements, but the elaborate hand-washing the Pharisees pressed on everyone was not the written Law itself; it was the tradition built up around it over generations - a hedge of human rules meant to guard the Law, which had quietly come to carry the same weight as the Law. The disciples had broken no commandment of God. They had broken a custom of men. And the accusers cannot tell the difference - which is exactly the confusion Jesus is about to expose.3
Jesus does not argue about hand-washing. He reaches back six centuries to Isaiah and lays the prophet's words over these men like a verdict: Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men (vv. 6-7). The diagnosis cuts to the root. The trouble is not that they worship too little but that their worship has come loose from the heart - all lips and no love, the outward forms intact while the inward devotion has drained away. And He names the mechanism by which it happened: they are teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Human rules have been elevated to the rank of divine command, until keeping the customs of the elders feels like serving God, even as the heart drifts further off. This is the peril of every religion of the surface. A person can be scrupulous about visible observance - the washings, the forms, the things others can see and approve - and be, all the while, far from the God those forms were meant to honor. Isaiah saw it in his day; Jesus sees it in His; and the word is meant to search every age, including the reader's own.
Then Jesus turns the charge from drift to outright displacement: For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men… Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition (vv. 8-9). The words are heavy with irony - full well, He says, you have become expert at it. It is one thing for tradition to drift alongside the command of God; it is another to use tradition to set the command aside. And that, Jesus says, is precisely what they have learned to do. The deepest danger of a man-made religious system is not that it adds harmless extras, but that the extras can grow strong enough to overrule the very word they claim to serve. A rule invented to protect obedience becomes, in time, a way around obedience. Notice the possessive, too: your own tradition. What had begun as reverence for God's Law has curved back on itself, until what is really being kept is not God's command but their own custom, their own authority, their own way. They are not honoring God with these traditions; they are honoring themselves - and calling it devotion.
Jesus does not leave the charge in the abstract; He gives a single, devastating example. Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother - one of the Ten Commandments, with the support of aging parents plainly in view (v. 10). But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift… he shall be free (v. 11). The maneuver was this: a man could declare the resources that might have helped his parents to be Corban - dedicated to God - and so escape the duty to support them, all under a cloak of piety. The vow sounded devout; in practice it let a son rob his own father and mother while looking holy doing it. Jesus draws the conclusion without flinching: ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; making the word of God of none effect through your tradition (vv. 12-13). There is the whole indictment in one phrase. A tradition that overrides the plain command of God does not merely add to the word - it cancels it, makes it of none effect, empties it of force. And the example is no accident. Of all the commandments, He chooses the one about honoring parents, where the loophole's cruelty is unmistakable: a religion of forms had found a way to be unloving and call it worship.3
Mark 7:14-23Out of the Heart of Men
14And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: 15There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. 16If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. 17And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; 19Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? 20And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
Having answered the leaders, Jesus turns to the crowd and lifts the matter to a principle everyone must grasp: Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man (vv. 14-15). The summons is emphatic - every one of you - and the saying is meant to overturn an assumption as old as it was deep. The whole instinct behind the purity customs was that defilement comes from outside: from contact with the wrong thing, the unwashed hand, the unclean food, the world pressing in. Keep the outside out, the thinking went, and you stay clean. Jesus reverses the flow. The real danger was never coming in; it is already within, and it comes out. What touches a person from outside cannot reach the place where defilement actually lives; what defiles rises from the heart and shows itself in what the person does and says. He adds the call that always marks a teaching meant to be pondered, not merely heard: If any man have ears to hear, let him hear (v. 16). This is a saying to chew on, because it relocates the entire battle. The line we are tempted to police is the line between ourselves and the world; the line that matters runs straight through the human heart.
Even the disciples find the saying hard, and ask Him about it privately, drawing a gentle rebuke: Are ye so without understanding also? (v. 18). Then He explains the mechanism plainly. Food entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught (v. 19) - it passes through the body and out again, never touching the moral center where a person is truly defiled or kept clean. The body processes food; the heart is left untouched by it. And Mark, watching from years later, sees the implication of what Jesus has just said and states it in a brief aside: this teaching is purging all meats. If nothing that enters from outside can defile the heart, then the long distinction between clean and unclean foods has reached its purpose and its end; the question of what a person eats has been settled by the One who made the heart the true measure. The note is reported simply, as a consequence of Jesus' words, not pressed into a controversy. The weight of the passage does not rest on diet at all. It rests on the relocation of defilement - from the plate to the heart, from what goes in to what comes out - and the freeing of the conscience from fear of the outside so that it can attend to the danger within.3
Then Jesus names what does defile, and the list is long and unsparing: That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness (vv. 20-22). Notice where He locates the source: not in the hands, not in the food, not in the world outside, but within, out of the heart of men. And notice the order - it begins with evil thoughts, the hidden interior springs, before it ever reaches the visible acts. The catalog moves from things the world readily condemns (murders, thefts, adulteries) to things it often excuses or admires (covetousness, pride, an evil eye), as if to say the rot is wider and more respectable than we like to think. These are not intrusions from outside that a careful person might fence out; they are productions of the heart, things it generates and sends forth. And He closes by repeating the verdict so it cannot be missed: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man (v. 23). It is a sobering anatomy of the human condition. The trouble is not chiefly around us, to be kept at a distance; it is in us, in the very organ from which our words and deeds flow. And that is a problem no hand-washing can touch - which is exactly why it needs the kind of help only One can give.
Mark 7:24-30Yet the Dogs Eat of the Crumbs
24And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. 25For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: 26The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. 27But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. 28And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. 29And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. 30And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
Jesus leaves Galilee and goes north into the borders of Tyre and Sidon (v. 24) - pagan territory, beyond the bounds of Israel. He seeks privacy: He entered into an house, and would have no man know it. But, as so often in Mark, he could not be hid. His fame outruns Him even here, and need finds Him out. A certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet (v. 25). Everything about her marks her as an outsider to the covenant promises of Israel: Mark calls her a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation (v. 26) - a Gentile woman of the coastal region, with no claim of descent from Abraham, no share in the Law, none of the standing that the men questioning Jesus in the previous scene took for granted. And yet she does the one thing they did not: she falls at His feet. Where the religious insiders came to find fault, this religious outsider comes to beseech. She has nothing to bring but her need and her trust, and she brings them to the right place - the feet of Jesus. It is a quiet rebuke to the whole logic of insider and outsider that the chapter has been dismantling: the one with no credentials comes nearest, because she comes in faith.3
Jesus' first answer sounds, at first hearing, like a closed door: Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs (v. 27). The image draws on the order of God's plan - the gospel coming first to Israel, the covenant people, the children - before it goes out to the nations. But the words must be read with care, for Jesus is not demeaning this woman; He is drawing out her faith. Notice the crucial word first. He does not say the dogs are never fed; He says the children are filled first. The very form of the saying leaves the door ajar - if there is a first, there is also a next. And the word He chooses for “dogs” is not the term for the wild, scavenging dogs of the street but a tender diminutive - the little dogs, the household pets that live in the house and belong to the family's life. He is not casting her out into the street; He is, as it were, placing her under the table, inside the home. The hard saying is a test that is also an invitation, and a woman of faith will hear the opening in it. Jesus, who knows the heart, is giving her the chance to show what is in hers - and she rises to it instantly.
Her reply is one of the most remarkable answers anyone gives Jesus in the Gospels: Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs (v. 28). She does not argue with the order He has named; she accepts it. She does not take offense; she takes the very image He has offered and turns it, gently and brilliantly, into the ground of her hope. Yes, Lord - she grants it all: the children are first, she is not one of them, she has no claim. And then: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. She asks for no place at the table; she asks only for what falls from it - and she has understood something profound about the One she is speaking to. She knows that the abundance of Jesus is so great that even His crumbs are enough; that to be fed from His overflow is to be fed indeed. There is no pride in her, and no despair either - only a humble, quick, daring faith that will not be turned away and will not overreach. She takes the lowest place and finds it is near enough to Him. And Jesus, who had drawn this out of her, honors it at once: For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter (v. 29). It is her word of faith that He commends - for this saying - and the deliverance is already done. She comes home to find the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed (v. 30), at peace.
Mark 7:31-37Ephphatha - Be Opened
31And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. 32And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. 33And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; 34And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. 35And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. 36And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 37And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
Jesus comes back toward the sea of Galilee, through the region of Decapolis, and there they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him (vv. 31-32). The man cannot hear, and his tongue is bound so that he cannot speak plainly - two locked doors that shut him out of the ordinary commerce of human life, unable to receive a word or to send one. He does not come on his own; he is brought, carried into Jesus' presence by others who plead on his behalf. That detail is worth pausing on: again and again in this Gospel, those who cannot come to Jesus are brought by the faith of friends - the paralytic let down through the roof, the sick laid in the streets, and now this man led by hands not his own. The compassion of the community becomes the bridge across which mercy travels. And what they ask is simple and trusting: only that Jesus would put his hand upon him. They have no theory of how He works; they know only that His touch is enough, and they bring their friend to it.
What follows is unusually tender and personal. He took him aside from the multitude (v. 33) - away from the press of the crowd, the staring eyes, into a private space where this one man could be the whole of Jesus' attention. Then comes a sequence of intimate gestures, each one suited to a man who cannot hear a word: He put his fingers into his ears, touching the very organs that were closed; He spit, and touched his tongue, reaching to the bound member that could not speak. To a deaf man, words of explanation would be useless; so Jesus speaks in the only language the man can receive - touch, gesture, presence - signing to him, as it were, what He is about to do. He meets the man precisely in his limitation, communicating through the senses still open to him. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed (v. 34). The upward look shows where the power comes from; the sigh is no sound of weariness or frustration but a deep, wordless groan of compassion - the inward ache of One who feels the weight of a creation bound by such suffering, and who is moved to the depths by this man's silence and isolation. The healing has not yet been spoken, and already we have seen the heart from which it comes.
Then Jesus speaks the word, and Mark, as he loves to do, preserves the very syllables in the language Jesus spoke: Ephphatha, that is, Be opened (v. 34). One word, and the locked doors swing wide: straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain (v. 35). The double cure answers the double affliction exactly - the ears that could not hear are opened; the tongue that could not speak is loosed; and the man who had lived in silence now hears the world and speaks plain. It is done straightway, instantly, completely, at a word. Then comes a familiar note in Mark: Jesus charged them that they should tell no man (v. 36) - the same restraint He shows elsewhere, guarding against a fame built on wonders rather than understanding. But the joy cannot be contained: the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it. And the crowd's response becomes the chapter's closing verdict and its highest praise: they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak (v. 37). It is an unconscious echo of the very first verdict ever spoken over the works of creation, when God saw all that He had made and it was good - and now, over the works of this Healer, the people say the same: he hath done all things well.
Further study
- Mark 7 · Greek interlinear + lexiconBible HubThe Greek text of Mark 7 word by word, with parsing and lexical links - useful for matēn (v. 7, “in vain,” the empty, fruitless worship Jesus names from Isaiah) and for koinoō (vv. 15, 18, 20, 23, the verb behind “defile”), and for weighing the Aramaic Ephphatha that Mark preserves in verse 34.
- Mark 7 ↔ Isaiah 29 · Jeremiah 17 · Ezekiel 36 · Isaiah 35Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Mark 7 to the rest of Scripture - the lips-far-from-the-heart of verses 6-7 read against Isaiah 29:13; the defiling heart of verses 21-23 read with the heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9) and the promise of a new heart (Ezek. 36:26); and the opened ears and loosed tongue of verses 34-35 read beside the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped… and the tongue of the dumb sing (Isa. 35:5-6).
- Mark 7 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Mark 7 - the washing customs explained in verses 3-4, the Corban vow of verse 11, the difficult parenthetical note in verse 19, the worn-down term for the Gentile woman in verses 27-28, and the Aramaic word transliterated in verse 34.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Their Heart Is Far From Me
- Isaiah 29:13this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me.The prophecy Jesus quotes in verses 6-7 - worship of the lips while the heart is far off.
- 1 Samuel 16:7man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.Why the washing of hands cannot reach the real problem (vv. 6, 15) - God weighs the heart, not the surface.
- John 4:24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.The worship that answers the emptiness of verse 7 - from the heart, not merely the lips.
- Matthew 23:23ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.The same fault as the Corban evasion of verses 11-13 - scrupulous in small forms, careless of the command of God.
- Colossians 2:22-23after the commandments and doctrines of men... not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.The <em>commandments of men</em> of verse 7 - rules with a show of wisdom that cannot touch the heart.
Out of the Heart of Men
- Jeremiah 17:9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?The trouble Jesus locates in verses 21-23 - the heart itself as the source of defilement.
- Ezekiel 36:26A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.The only adequate answer to verse 21 - not cleaner hands but a new heart, the gift God promised to give.
- Psalm 51:10Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.The right prayer when the heart is the problem (v. 21) - asking God to cleanse what no washing can reach.
- Matthew 23:26cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.The same reversal as verse 15 - the inside, not the outside, is where cleansing must begin.
- Luke 6:45out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.The principle behind verses 20-23 - what comes out reveals what the heart is full of.
Yet the Dogs Eat of the Crumbs
- Romans 1:16the gospel of Christ... to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.The order behind verse 27 - the children <em>first</em>, but not the children only.
- Isaiah 49:6I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.The promise this scene foretastes (vv. 28-29) - the salvation of God reaching beyond Israel to the nations.
- Ephesians 3:6That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ.What the crumbs of verse 28 anticipate - the Gentiles brought fully into the promise in Christ.
- Matthew 8:10I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.Another outsider whose faith Jesus honors, like the woman of verses 28-29 - trust that does not stand on standing.
- Matthew 15:28O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.The parallel account of this scene - the same faith of verse 28, named great and answered in full.
Ephphatha - Be Opened
- Isaiah 35:5-6Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped... and the tongue of the dumb sing.The sign of the kingdom Jesus fulfills in verses 34-35 - the deaf hearing and the dumb speaking when God comes to save.
- Genesis 1:31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.The echo behind the crowd’s verdict in verse 37 - <em>he hath done all things well</em>, the Healer undoing the marring of a good creation.
- Matthew 11:5The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk... the deaf hear, the dead are raised up.The evidence Jesus points to as proof He is the Coming One - the very work of verses 35-37.
- Mark 5:41And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi.The same Aramaic word of power preserved as in verse 34 - Jesus’ own speech, then translated for the reader.
- John 10:27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.What the opened ears of verse 35 point toward - the Lord who opens the ear to hear His voice.