1 The Pharisees met about Him, and also some scribes who had come from Jerusalem.
2 They had noticed that some of His disciples were in the habit of eating their meals without first giving their hands a ceremonial washing to make them clean.
3 For the Pharisees and all the Jews practice the customs handed down to them from their forefathers,
4 and will never eat until they have carefully washed their hands, and they never eat anything brought from the market until they wash it; and they have many other religious practices which they got from their forefathers, as the washing of cups, pitchers, and pans.
5 And so the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, "Why is it that your disciples do not practice the customs handed down from our forefathers, but eat their meals without purifying their hands?"
6 But He answered them, "Isaiah beautifully prophesied about you hypocrites; as the Scripture says: "'This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far, far away from me;
7 Their worship of me is but an empty show; the things they teach are but men's precepts.'
8 "You give up what God has commanded,
9 you cling to what men hand down. You are fine teachers to cancel what God commanded, in order to keep what men have handed down!
10 For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and again, 'Whoever curses his father or mother must certainly be put to death,'
11 but you say if a man tells his father or mother, 'Everything I have that may be of use to you is Corban,' that is, consecrated to God,
12 you let him off from doing anything more for his father or mother;
13 and so you set aside what God has said by what you have handed down. You have many other practices like these."
14 Again He called the people to Him and said, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand.
15 Nothing that goes into a man from the outside can make him foul, but the things that come from the inside of a man are the things that make him foul."
16 Omitted Text.
17 Now when He had left the crowd and gone home, His disciples were asking Him the meaning of this story.
18 And He answered them, "Are you too without understanding yet? Do you not know that nothing from the outside that goes into a man can make him foul,
19 because it does not reach his heart but only his stomach, and then passes off into the waste?" In thus speaking He made all foods clean.
20 He kept on saying, "The thing that comes from the inside of a man is the thing that makes him foul,
21 for from the inside, that is, from the hearts of men, designs for doing evil come, sexual immorality, stealing, murder,
22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, abusiveness, haughtiness, thoughtlessness.
23 All these evils come from the inside of a man and make him foul."
24 Then He left there and went into the neighborhood of Tyre and Sidon. He went into a house and wanted no one to know that He was there. But He could not escape public notice.
25 On the contrary, a woman, whose little daughter had a foul spirit, at once heard about Him and came and flung herself at His feet.
26 She was a heathen who spoke Greek and had been born in Syro-Phenicia. And she kept begging Him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 But He was saying to her, "Let the children first eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it out to the house dogs."
28 But she answered Him, "Yes, Lord, and yet the house dogs under the table usually eat the crumbs the children drop."
29 Then He said to her, "Because you have said this, go home; the demon has gone out of your daughter."
30 She went home and found her daughter lying in bed, and the demon gone out.
31 He left the neighborhood of Tyre and went by way of Sidon through the district of the Ten Cities down to the Sea of Galilee.
32 And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and almost dumb, and they begged Him to lay His hand upon him.
33 So He took him off from the crowd by himself and put His fingers in his ears and touched his tongue with saliva.
34 Then He looked up to heaven and sighed, as He said, "Ephphatha," which means, "Be opened."
35 And his ears were opened and his tongue was untied, and he began to speak distinctly.
36 Then He charged them not to tell anybody about it, but the more He kept charging them, the more they kept spreading the news.