Thematic Bible
Mark 7:1 (show verse)
Now the Pharisees gathered to meet him, with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem.
Mark 7:2 (show verse)
They noticed that some of his disciples ate their food with 'common' (that is, unwashed) hands.
Mark 7:3 (show verse)
(The Pharisees and all the Jews decline to eat till they wash their hands up to the wrist, in obedience to the tradition of the elders;
Mark 7:4 (show verse)
they decline to eat what comes from the market till they have washed it; and they have a number of other traditions to keep about washing cups and jugs and basins [and beds].)
Mark 7:5 (show verse)
Then the Pharisees and scribes put this question to him, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders? Why do they take their food with 'common' hands?"
Mark 7:6 (show verse)
He said to them, "Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you hypocrites ??as it is written, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me:
Mark 7:7 (show verse)
vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts.
Mark 7:8 (show verse)
You drop what God commands and hold to human tradition.
Mark 7:9 (show verse)
Yes, forsooth," he added, "you set aside what God commands, so as to maintain your own tradition.
Mark 7:10 (show verse)
Thus, Moses said, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death.
Mark 7:11 (show verse)
But you say that if a man tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service, but it is Korban' (that is, dedicated to God),
Mark 7:12 (show verse)
he is exempt, so you hold, from doing anything for his father or mother.
Mark 7:13 (show verse)
That is repealing the word of God in the interests of the tradition which you keep up. And you do many things like that."
Mark 7:14 (show verse)
Then he called the crowd to him again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand this:
Mark 7:15 (show verse)
nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him; it is what comes from him that defiles him.
Mark 7:16 (show verse)
If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this."
Mark 7:17 (show verse)
Now when he went indoors away from the crowd, his disciples asked him the meaning of this parabolic saying.
Mark 7:18 (show verse)
He said to them, "So you do not understand, either? Do you not see how nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him?
Mark 7:19 (show verse)
It does not enter his heart but his belly and passes from that into the drain" (thus he pronounced all food clean).
Mark 7:20 (show verse)
"No," he said, "it is what comes from a man, that is what defiles him.
Mark 7:21 (show verse)
From within, from the heart of man, the designs of evil come: sexual vice, stealing, murder,
Mark 7:22 (show verse)
adultery, lust, malice, deceit, sensuality, envying, slander, arrogance, recklessness,
Mark 7:23 (show verse)
all these evils issue from within and they defile a man."
Mark 7:24 (show verse)
Leaving there, he went away to the territory of Tyre and Sidon. He went into a house and wished no one to know of it, but he could not escape notice;
Mark 7:25 (show verse)
a woman heard of him, whose daughter had an unclean spirit, and she came in and fell at his feet
Mark 7:26 (show verse)
(the woman was a pagan, of Syrophoenician birth) begging him to cast the daemon out of her daughter.
Mark 7:27 (show verse)
He said to her, "Let the children be satisfied first of all; it is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
Mark 7:28 (show verse)
She answered him, "No, sir, but under the table the dogs do pick up the children's crumbs."
Mark 7:29 (show verse)
He said to her, "Well, go your way; the daemon has left your daughter, since you have said that."
Mark 7:30 (show verse)
So she went home and found the child lying in bed and the daemon gone from her.
Mark 7:31 (show verse)
He left the territory of Tyre again and passed through Sidon to the sea of Galilee, crossing the territory of Decapolis.
Mark 7:32 (show verse)
And a deaf man who stammered was brought to him, with the request that he would lay his hand on him.
Mark 7:33 (show verse)
So taking him aside from the crowd by himself, he put his fingers into the man's ears, touched his tongue with saliva,
Mark 7:34 (show verse)
and looking up to heaven with a sigh he said to him, "Ephphatha" (which means, Open).
Mark 7:35 (show verse)
Then his ears were [at once] opened and his tongue freed from its fetter ??he began to speak correctly.
Mark 7:36 (show verse)
Jesus forbade them to tell anyone about it, but the more he forbade them the more eagerly they made it public;
Mark 7:37 (show verse)
they were astounded in the extreme, saying, "How splendidly he has done everything! He actually makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak!"