7:4 and when they come from market they will not eat without bathing first; and they have a good many other customs which they have received traditionally and cling to, such as the rinsing of cups and pots and of bronze utensils, and the washing of beds.)
7:5 So the Pharisees and Scribes put the question to Him: "Why do your disciples transgress the traditions of the Elders, and eat their food with unclean hands?"
7:6 "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites," He replied; "as it is written, "'This People honour Me with their lips, while their hearts are far away from Me:
7:7 But idle is their devotion while they lay down precepts which are mere human rules.'
7:8 "You neglect God's Commandment: you hold fast to men's traditions."
7:9 "Praiseworthy indeed!" He added, "to set at nought God's Commandment in order to observe your own traditions!
7:10 For Moses said, 'Honour thy father and thy mother' and again, 'He who curses father or mother, let him die the death.'
7:11 But *you* say, 'If a man says to his father or mother, It is a Korban (that is, a thing devoted to God)
7:12 And so you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or mother,
7:13 thus nullifying God's precept by your tradition which you have handed down. And many things of that kind you do."
7:14 Then Jesus called the people to Him again. "Listen to me, all of you," He said, "and understand.
7:15 There is nothing outside a man which entering him can make him unclean; but it is the things which come out of a man that make him unclean."
7:17 After He had left the crowd and gone indoors, His disciples began to ask Him about this figure of speech.
7:18 "Have *you* also so little understanding?" He replied; "do you not understand that anything whatever that enters a man from outside cannot make him unclean,
7:19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and passes away ejected from him?" By these words Jesus pronounced all kinds of food clean.
7:20 "What comes out of a man," He added, "that it is which makes him unclean.
7:21 For from within, out of men's hearts, their evil purposes proceed--fornication, theft, murder, adultery,
7:23 all these wicked things come out from within and make a man unclean."
7:24 Then He rose and left that place and went into the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon. Here He entered a house and wished no one to know it, but He could not escape observation.
7:25 Forthwith a woman whose little daughter was possessed by a foul spirit heard of Him, and came and flung herself at His feet.
7:26 She was a Gentile woman, a Syro-phoenician by nation: and again and again she begged Him to expel the demon from her daughter.
7:27 "Let the children first eat all they want," He said; "it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
7:28 "True, Sir," she replied, "and yet the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
7:29 "For those words of yours, go home," He replied; "the demon has gone out of your daughter."
7:30 So she went home, and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
7:31 Returning from the neighbourhood of Tyre, He came by way of Sidon to the Lake of Galilee, passing through the district of the Ten Towns.
7:32 Here they brought to Him a deaf man that stammered, on whom they begged Him to lay His hands.
7:33 So Jesus taking him aside, apart from the crowd, put His fingers into his ears, and spat, and moistened his tongue;
7:34 and looking up to Heaven He sighed, and said to him, "Ephphatha!" (that is, "Open!")
7:35 And the man's ears were opened, and his tongue became untied, and he began to speak perfectly.
7:36 Then Jesus charged them to tell no one; but the more He charged them, all the more did they spread the news far and wide.
7:37 The amazement was extreme. "He succeeds in everything he attempts," they exclaimed; "he even makes deaf men hear and dumb men speak!"
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