1Then the Pharisees gathered round him, as
did some of the scribes
who had come from Jerusalem,
2and seeing some of his disciples with unclean hands (that is, unwashed) eating bread, they found fault.
3For neither the Pharisees nor any Jews eat unless they have washed
their hands with the fist, holding to the tradition of the elders,
4and
on return from the market, unless they dip themselves, they do not eat. And there are many other
things which they have received to keep to: washings of chalices and pots and copper vessels and beds.
5Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?”
6To which he answered and said to them, “Isaiah prophesied well about you, you hypocrites, as it stands written:
‘This people honours me with their lips,
But their heart is far removed from me.
7And they worship me vainly,
Teaching as doctrines
The commandments of men.’
8For having abandoned the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men: washings of pots and chalices, and you do many other similar
things.”
9And he said to them, “
How finely you set aside the commandment of God so as to keep your own tradition!
10For Moses said,
‘Honour your father and your mother’, and,
‘He who speaks ill of his father or mother must certainly die.’
11But you approve if a man says to
his father or mother, ‘What you might have been benefitted by from me
is corban’, which means ‘a gift
offering’.
12And you don't permit him to do anything any more for his father or his mother,
13so you invalidate the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down. And you do many similar
things.”
14Then when he had called all the crowd to himself, he said to them, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand:
15there is nothing on the outside of man which can defile him, if it goes into him, but
it is the
things that come out of him – those are
the things which defile man.
16If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”
17Then when he went into a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable.
18And he said to them, “Are you also witless in this way? Do you not understand that nothing from outside which goes into a man can defile him?
19Because it does not go into his heart, but into
his belly, and it goes out into the latrine,
a system which makes all foodstuffs clean.”
20And he said, “
Now what comes out of a man – that
is what defiles man.
21For from inside, out of the heart of men, come ill-natured disputes, adulteries, fornications, murders,
22thefts, frauds, wicked acts, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, arrogance, foolishness.
23All these wicked
things come out from the inside and defile man.”
24Then he got up and departed from there to the regions between Tyre and Sidon, and he went into a house, not wanting anyone to know, but he could not escape notice.
25For a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit had heard about him, and she came and fell
down at his feet.
26Now the woman was a Greek, a Syro-phoenician by race. And she asked him to cast out the demon from her daughter.
27But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the children's bread and throw
it to the dogs.”
28Then she answered and said to him, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs.”
29Then he said to her, “You may go because of that remark. The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
30And she went off to her house, and she found
that the demon
had come out and
that her daughter
had been laid on a bed.
31And again he left the borders of Tyre and Sidon and came to the Sea of Galilee in
the middle of the districts of Decapolis.
32And they brought him
a man deaf
and hardly able to speak, and they pleaded with him to put
his hand on him.
33Then he took him away from the crowd privately and put his fingers in his ears and spat and touched his tongue,
34and he looked up to heaven, and he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha”, which means “be opened.”
35And immediately his
sense of hearing was opened and the impediment of his tongue was released, and he spoke properly.
36Then he commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he commanded them, the more profusely they publicized
it.
37And they were astounded in the extreme, and they said, “He has done everything well – he enables both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
Reference(s) in Chapter 7: v.6 ↔ Isaiah 29:13 ● v.7 ↔ Isaiah 29:13 ● v.10 ↔ Exodus 20:12, Exodus 21:17, Deuteronomy 5:16.