It is amazing how often Jesus responded not to the question asked but to the hidden motive which prompted it.
I remember discussing this in adult Sunday school once and one of the class members said (paraphrasing): “I wonder if God whispered ‘Son, your message is not just for Jews but for the gentiles too.’”
I thought it was an interesting take, for this is the first time, that Jesus went to those beyound the Jews. Of course, I can’t remember when curing the Centurion’s son happened in relation to this, but the Centurion was one of the “judaized Romans” or whatever is the correct term.
Do I understand correctly that Jesus is apparently equating some other people to "children," and the woman and her child to the "dogs?"
Why is that? I mean, how does that make sense? Why would any reasonable person take one look at another person and deem him a "dog?" Was it because she was of a different ethnicity?
Would any of the other people within earshot have understood and condoned such an ethnic slur?
Why?
Regards,
Bookmark
Jesus was not unkind — the reader is too impatient to reach the end of the story.
It is not about the woman at all, it is about being persistence and having faith in our dealings with God.
Read about Abraham trying to “Jew down” God in not destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.
God made us in His Image — He expects us to stand up and argue with Him, not cower before Him.
She is not a Jew but request on the basis Jesus son of David (King of the Jews). Jesus is making clear his message is to the Jew first. The word for dog is also puppy and when woman accepted the position and understood it as metaphor Jesus grant her request as an example of faith to instruct his disciples.
“Many people merely want relief, not healing.”
I struggle with that whenever I pray.
I understand this passage as Jesus’s way of calling out the woman’s bigotry by turning it on her. In Matthew, it makes the woman’s ethnicity more plain by saying she was from Canaan. There was (and still is) a lot of bad blood between Canaanites and Israelites.
It would have been her natural inclination to be anti-Jewish, to hate Jesus for His ethnicity and religion.
Jesus was testing her to see if her calling on Him was a sincere belief in who He was, or if it was a ploy to get Him just to heal her daughter. In other words, whether the woman loved just her daughter, or loved the Lord AND loved her daughter.
`