A Most Clever Woman - Reflections on Mt 15: (10-20), 21-28, 12th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Wednesday, June 17, 2026
“And Jesus left there and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon” (Mt.15:21). Matthew does not tell us exactly why Jesus headed northwest to the non-Jewish locations of Tyre and Sidon. Was he leaving the Galilee region due to opposition to his teaching? In Mt.15:1-20, sharp opposition to him and his disciples arose about traditions of the Jewish elders, and their unwillingness to follow those traditions to the letter. Or he might have left to avoid the surging demands of the crowds for healing (so, Mt.14:34-36). Or perhaps he was still seeking solitude, his alone time interrupted by the floundering boat on the sea, filled with terrified disciples? Whatever the reason for this unexpected foray into foreign territory, far from any Jewish centers, Jesus has a most unusual encounter.
“Suddenly a Canaanite woman came forth from those regions and shouted out, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is cruelly tormented by a demon’” (Mt.15:22). Mark’s account of this encounter, surely Matthew’s model, describes the foreign woman as “a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth” (Mk.7:24). Here she is a Canaanite, Matthew employing that ancient designation of the pagan inhabitants of Israel, those people displaced by the invading Israelites, the original inhabitants of the land. The Canaanites lived cheek by jowl with Israel for many centuries, practicing their religious devotion to Baal, the Astarte, and other gods. It is impossible to say when they disappeared from Israel, but the fact that this woman is called by that name suggests that their memory was still alive in certain places near what is called Israel in the first century CE. The Canaanites were, for nearly all of their time in the land the enemies of the Israelites. It could be that that status would make this woman’s request of Jesus all the more surprising and potentially disturbing.
We remember that Jesus had directed his disciples to confine their mission to the lost sheep of Israel (Mt.10:5-6), and in other passages we have seen Matthew wrestling with the central question of the significance of Judaism in the plan of God, now that Christianity has begun to take hold and spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. But here it is not a question of Judaism but one of a pagan foreigner, and a woman, too. In the first century, issues of male-female relationships: what roles women were to play in family and society, how they were to be treated by men, both privately and publicly, their required subservience to men, etc., were important and much discussed. For a foreign woman to demand healing from Jesus was bound to raise controversy.
Jesus is, perhaps surprisingly, silent in the face of the woman’s heartfelt cry concerning her tormented daughter, but the disciples have immediate and direct advice to give. “Dismiss her, for she is shouting after us” (Mt.15:23). This appears to mean that they want nothing to do with her, and neither should Jesus—she is a nuisance with her demands and her shouting! Jesus finally speaks, but what he says is strangely ambiguous: “I have been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt.15:24). This sounds like a reiteration of what Jesus earlier said to his disciples in Mt.10:5-6, but here he makes even clearer just who is the target of his mission: however, the lost sheep could be those lost within Israel or to all Israel which is in fact lost. Whichever it may mean, what can it have to do with this desperate woman?
“She came and did homage to him, saying, ‘Lord, help me’” (Mt.15:25). The woman cares not at all who Jesus thinks he is responsible for in his work; she simply asks for his help for her daughter. But Jesus replies out of his stated conviction about whom he has come to help. “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mt.15:26). This proverb is both barbed and frankly cruel. Jesus says, in effect, I indeed have bread to give, but I will only give it to “my” children, that is, the lost sheep of Israel, and not to the dogs, a nasty designation for the woman who has come for help. Dogs in the ancient world were not seen as the “best friends” of modern times, but often roamed in packs around the garbage dumps of the cities, preying on anyone, animal or human, that would get the way of their search for food and shelter. Jesus labels the Canaanite woman a dog, or surely she must have heard it so!
She is not deterred, even by Jesus’s apparent curt harshness. “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat from the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (Mt.15:27). It was common, she reminds Jesus, for households to keep dogs around to clean up after meals, licking the floors of crumbs and other droppings from the food that falls there. It may be true, she implies, that God has first to “feed” the Jews, God’s chosen ones, but is it not also true that God feeds the Gentiles, too, who, like the master’s dogs, are satisfied even by the crumbs from the table? This woman has taught Jesus a lesson he needed to learn; God’s gifts are not restricted to the Jews, but also come to the Gentiles, and thus to me and my daughter.
Jesus, is greatly impressed by this clever answer! “‘O woman, great is your faith. Let it be done to you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed from that hour” (Mt.15:28). Matthew uses this tale as a model for the diversity of the emerging Christian community, filled as it is with Jews and Gentiles. This diversity is its strength, not a source of difficulty. Not only does this amazing narrative speak to the extraordinary diversity of the community, but it further says something about the leader of that community, Jesus. He is open to the instruction even of a Canaanite woman, a foreigner whose love for her daughter brings her to listen to the harsh taunts of this wandering teacher, but to persist in her desires for healing, a healing this man is able to give. And Jesus is impressed! Her faith, he says, is great, and aids directly in the healing of her tormented daughter. This is indeed a crucial tale in the ongoing narrative of Jesus, announcing the openeness of the community of Christianity to all, as well as the openeness of the Master to learning and even correction by a foreign woman.