Mark 7
1The Pharisees gathered around him, along with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem. 2They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with defiled hands—that is, unwashed. 3(For the Pharisees and all the Judeans do not eat unless they wash their hands thoroughly, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash themselves. There are many other things they have received and hold to: the immersion of cups and pitchers and bronze vessels and dining couches.)
5So the Pharisees and the scribes questioned him: "Why do your disciples not conduct themselves according to the tradition of the elders, but instead eat their food with defiled hands?"
6He said to them: "Isaiah prophesied well about you performers, as it is written: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far distant from me. 7They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of human beings.'
8Having abandoned the commandment of God, you hold fast to the tradition of human beings."
9And he said to them: "How expertly you set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your own tradition! 10For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' 11But you say: If a person says to his father or mother, 'Corban'—which means 'Gift to God'—'is what you might have received from me,' 12you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother. 13You invalidate the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many similar things."
14Then, summoning the crowd again, he said to them: "Listen to me, all of you, and understand. 15There is nothing outside a person that by going into them can defile them. Rather, the things that come out of a person are what defile the person."
17When he had gone into a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the riddle. 18He said to them: "Are you also so lacking in understanding? Do you not grasp that nothing entering a person from outside can defile them, 19because it does not enter into the heart but into the stomach, and goes out into the latrine?"—thus declaring all foods clean. 20And he said: "What comes out of a person—that is what defiles the person. 21For from within, out of the human heart, come evil schemes: sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, 22adulteries, acts of greed, malicious deeds, deceit, shameless indulgence, the envious eye, slander, arrogance, foolishness. 23All these evils come from within and defile the person."
24Rising from there, he went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and wanted no one to know, but he could not escape notice. 25Immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by ethnicity. She kept asking 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 little dogs."
28But she answered him: "Lord, even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs."
29He said to her: "Because of this word, go—the demon has left your daughter."
30She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31Then departing again from the region of Tyre, he went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the middle of the Decapolis region. 32They brought to him a man who was deaf and could barely speak, and they urged him to lay his hand on him. 33Taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into the man's ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed deeply and said to him, "Ephphatha!"—which means, "Be opened!" 35And his ears were opened, the binding on his tongue was released, and he began speaking plainly.
36Jesus ordered them to tell no one. But the more he ordered them, the more abundantly they proclaimed it. 37They were astonished beyond all measure, saying, "He has done everything well—he makes the deaf hear and the mute speak!"