Mark 7: Summary, Key Verses and Study Questions

Some Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem see that some of the disciples eat with unwashed hands, following the tradition of the elders, and ask Jesus why. He answers by quoting Isaiah: this people honors him with their lips, but their heart is far away. He charges them with leaving God's commandment for human traditions and gives an example: by saying the word corban, someone could declare their goods dedicated to God and so stop helping their parents, against the command to honor them.

Jesus calls the crowd and teaches that nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile them, but what comes out does. Later, at home, he explains to his disciples that food goes into the stomach, not the heart; Mark adds that in this way Jesus declared all foods clean. What comes out of the heart is evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, envy, slander, pride and foolishness; these defile.

Jesus goes to the region of Tyre, and a Greek woman, a Syrophoenician by birth, begs him to cast a demon out of her daughter. He tells her the children should be fed first, and that it is not right to throw the children's bread to the dogs. She answers that even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. Jesus acknowledges her answer and tells her to go, that the demon has left her daughter, and she finds it so. Then, in the region of the Decapolis, they bring a deaf man who can hardly speak. Jesus takes him aside, puts his fingers in his ears, touches his tongue with spit, looks up to heaven, sighs and says Ephphatha, meaning be opened. The man hears and speaks plainly. Jesus orders them to tell no one, but the more he orders it, the more they proclaim it, and the people say he has done all things well.

Mark 7 invites us to examine the heart before appearances. A church can have valuable traditions, but when they become a way to avoid obeying God, as in the case of corban, they need correcting. In a small group you can ask which habits give us a feeling of religiousness without leading us to love God and others.

The Syrophoenician woman teaches humble perseverance in prayer. She does not take offense or leave: she keeps asking in faith. And the deaf man of the Decapolis reminds us that Jesus attends to each person personally, with closeness, tenderness and patience.