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Mark 7

1The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him. 2They saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled hands, that is, unwashed hands. 3For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in the prescribed way, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they return from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. There are many other things they have received and hold to: washings of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and dining couches. 5The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with defiled hands?”

6He said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:

‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7In vain they worship me, teaching human commands as doctrines.’

8“You leave God's command and hold to human tradition.” 9And he said to them, “How well you set aside God's command so that you may keep your tradition! 10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.’ 11But you say that if a person tells his father or mother, ‘Whatever benefit you might have received from me is Corban’—that is, a gift—12you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13You make God's word void by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like these.”

14Calling the crowd to him again, he said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. 15Nothing outside a person that enters him can defile him. Rather, the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

17When he had left the crowd and entered a house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18He said to them, “Are you also so lacking in understanding? Do you not realize that whatever enters a person from outside cannot defile him, 19because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and goes out into the latrine?” In this way he made all foods clean. 20He went on, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21For from within, out of people's hearts, come evil reasonings, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, 22adulteries, acts of greed, wickedness, deceit, shamelessness, an evil eye, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. 23All these evil things come from within and defile a person.”

24He got up and went from there into the territory of Tyre. He entered a house and wanted no one to know, but he could not remain hidden. 25Immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, came, and fell at his feet. 26The woman was Greek, Syrophoenician by birth. She kept asking him to drive the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.” 28She answered him, “Lord, even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs.” 29He said to her, “Because of this word, go; the demon has gone out of your daughter.” 30She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

31Leaving the territory of Tyre again, he went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought him a deaf man who had difficulty speaking and begged him to lay his hand on him. 33Taking him aside privately, away from the crowd, he put his fingers into the man's ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue. 34Looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” 35His ears were opened, the bond of his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Jesus ordered them to tell no one. But the more he ordered them, the more abundantly they proclaimed it. 37They were astonished beyond measure and said, “He has done everything well. He makes even the deaf hear and the speechless speak.”

Translation notes 7

5:41; 7:34 — Preserved speech. “Talitha koum” and “Ephphatha” retain the Semitic expressions Mark preserves and then explains. In 5:41, “I tell you” belongs to Mark's Greek explanation, even though it is not a separate element in the short expression he quotes.

7:3–4 — Washing. The obscure expression at verse 3 is literally “with a fist.” Its exact washing procedure is uncertain; “in the prescribed way” conveys the ritual context without inventing the technique. “All the Jews” retains Mark's generalization. Some textual witnesses omit the dining couches in verse 4.

7:11 — Corban. A designation for a gift dedicated to God. Mark supplies “gift”; the surrounding argument concerns withholding resources from parents on the basis of that dedication.

7:16 — Numbering gap. Some witnesses add: “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” This sentence is absent from the main text of the Greek base. The later verse numbers are retained for reference.

7:19 — All foods clean. The final phrase is literally “cleansing all foods.” This draft takes it as the narrator's explanation of Jesus' saying. “In this way he made” makes that grammatical judgment explicit. An alternative interpretation connects the phrase with bodily elimination; the masculine participle favors a reference to Jesus over a simple grammatical reference to the food. Here “clean” concerns ritual acceptability. A textual variant has a neuter participle, which more readily connects the phrase to the food.

7:21–22 — Sexual immoralities; evil eye. The plural porneiai is broad language for sexual wrongdoing, not simply adultery, which is separately named. “An evil eye” is an idiom associated with envy or begrudging generosity; the phrase does not require a reference to a magical curse.

7:26–28 — Greek woman; little dogs. “Greek” here marks her as Gentile, alongside her Syrophoenician origin. The Greek uses a diminutive for dogs, with the table scene suggesting household dogs. “Little dogs” does not make the comparison affectionate or remove its degrading contrast with the children. “First” is also part of Jesus' wording.