Mark 7

1The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus.

2They saw that some of his disciples were eating their bread with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.

3For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands with a cupped hand, holding to the tradition of the elders.

4When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions they have received and hold to, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, bronze pots, and dining couches.

5So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with defiled hands?”

6He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

7They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of human beings.’

8You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

9He also said to them, “How skillfully you set aside the commandment of God in order to establish your own tradition!

10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.’

11But you say that if someone tells his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might have received from me is Corban’—that is, an offering—

12then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother.

13In this way you make the word of God void by the tradition you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

14Then he called the crowd to him again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand.

15Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, what comes out of a person is what defiles that person.”

16[“If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”]

17When he had left the crowd and gone into the house, his disciples asked him about the parable.

18He said to them, “Are you also so lacking in understanding? Do you not see that nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile them?

19For it does not go into their heart but into their stomach, and then it goes out into the latrine.” In saying this, he declared all foods clean.

20He went on, “What comes out of a person is what defiles that person.

21For from within, out of the human heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder,

22adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.

23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

24Jesus got up and left there and went to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, but he could not escape notice.

25Immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet.

26The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.

27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

28But she answered him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

29Then he said to her, “Because of this answer, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

30She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon was gone.

31Then Jesus left the region of Tyre again and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the Decapolis.

32Some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly speak, and they begged Jesus to lay his hand on him.

33He took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spat and touched the man’s tongue.

34Looking up to heaven, he sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.”

35At once the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he began to speak plainly.

36Jesus ordered them to tell no one. But the more he ordered them, the more widely they proclaimed it.

37They were utterly astonished and said, “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”