Mark 7

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