The Life of Jesus

Their worship of me is useless, because they teach man-made rules as if they were doctrines.'

"You depart from God's command and hold onto human tradition. Indeed,"

he said to them, "you have made a fine art of departing from God's command in order to keep your tradition!

For Moshe said, `Honor your father and your mother,' and `Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'

But you say, `If someone says to his father or mother, "I have promised as a korban" ' " (that is, as a gift to God) " ` "what I might have used to help you," '

then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother.

Thus, with your tradition which you had handed down to you, you nullify the Word of God! And you do other things like this."

Then Yeshua called the people to him again and said, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand this!

There is nothing outside a person which, by going into him, can make him unclean. Rather, it is the things that come out of a person which make a person unclean!"

"Anyone who has ears that can hear, let him hear!"

When he had left the people and entered the house, his talmidim asked him about the parable.

He replied to them, "So you too are without understanding? Don't you see that nothing going into a person from outside can make him unclean?

For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and it passes out into the latrine." (Thus he declared all foods ritually clean.)

"It is what comes out of a person," he went on, "that makes him unclean.

For from within, out of a person's heart, come forth wicked thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,

greed, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, foolishness...

All these wicked things come from within, and they make a person unclean."

Next, Yeshua left that district and went off to the vicinity of Tzor and Tzidon. There he found a house to stay in and wanted to remain unrecognized, but keeping hidden proved impossible.

Instead, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit in her came to him and fell down at his feet.

The woman was a Greek, by birth a Syro-phoenician, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.

He said, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's food and toss it to their pet dogs."

She answered him, "That is true, sir; but even the dogs under the table eat the children's leftovers."

Then he said to her, "For such an answer you may go on home; the demon has left your daughter."

She went back home and found the child lying on the couch, the demon gone.

Then he left the district of Tzor and went through Tzidon to Lake Kinneret and on to the region of the Ten Towns.