NRSV Mark 7 Chapter
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7:1
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,
7:2
they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.
7:3
(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;
7:4
and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles. )
7:5
So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?"
7:6
He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
7:7
in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'
7:8
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
7:9
Then he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!
7:10
For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.'
7:11
But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban' (that is, an offering to God )--
7:12
then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother,
7:13
thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this."
7:14
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
7:15
there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
7:16
7:17
When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable.
7:18
He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile,
7:19
since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
7:20
And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles.
7:21
For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,
7:22
adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
7:23
All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
7:24
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,
7:25
but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.
7:26
Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
7:27
He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
7:28
But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
7:29
Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter."
7:30
So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
7:31
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.
7:32
They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him.
7:33
He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.
7:34
Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened."
7:35
And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
7:36
Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
7:37
They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."