A Canaanite Woman’S Faith
A CANAANITE WOMAN’S FAITH
MATTHEW 15:21-28
How does this woman help us see more of what the gospel means for us?
The evangelist relates this incident against the background of the implied lowering of Jewish-Gentile barriers in 15:10-20. He knows that the Gentile mission proper could not start until after Jesus’ death and resurrection (23:19f.; cf. 10:5f.) but he records the healing of this woman’s daughter as an exceptional occurrence in the period before his death, like that of the centurion’s servant (8:5-13). It has already been suggested that there is symbolical significance in the fact that these two healings were effected at a distance. The woman, called “a Greek, a Syrophoenician” in Mark 7:26, is here called a Canaanite: the Tyrians, Sidonians and other Phoenicians were Canaanites who retained their independence for centuries after the other Canaanites lost theirs.
Matthew’s readers might recall another Gentile woman in that area whose child was healed by the power of Israel’s God in Elijah’s day (1 Kings 17:17-24; cf. Luke 4:25f.). It is Matthew alone who records the woman’s appeal to Jesus as “Son of David” (15:22; cf. 9:27, but the plea is of doubtful appropriateness on Gentile lips), the disciples’ advice to “send her away” (15:23) and his reply (to them, evidently) that he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24; cf. 10:6), which suggests that they meant “Do what she wants and let her go.”
Jesus was indeed minded to do what she wanted, but with nobler motives than to get rid of a mother’s noisy importunity. His further interchange with her was calculated to bring quite an exceptional expression of shrewd and determined faith. By Jewish standards Gentiles were “dogs,” unclean creatures; it may be of importance that in Greek (the language in which presumably this conversation was carried on) the word used in 15:26f. is a diminutive which denotes not the pariah dogs out of doors but the puppies indoors, the children’s pets. The phrase “their master’s table” (15:27) may imply the woman’s readiness to take a place of inferiority to Jews (Mark 7:28 speaks of “the children’s crumbs”). For the instantaneousness of the cure (15:28) cf. 8:13.
Meditation Faith does not query the truth of Christ’s statements: it argues from them.