Matthew Chapter 15 verse 26 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 26. - But he answered and said. At length Jesus spoke directly to her; but his words were rough in sound, still enforcing the previous repulse. It is not meet; οὐκ ἔστι καλόν: non est bonum (Vulgate). Another reading of less authority is oboe ἔξεστιν, "it is not lawful." The question is rather of fairness and expediency than of lawfulness. To take the children's bread. "The children" are the chosen people, "the children of the kingdom" (Matthew 8:12), who held this high position by election, however individuals might forfeit it by an unworthy use of privileges. "Bread" is meant to signify the graces and favours bestowed by God in Christ. To cast it. An humiliating term; not to give it, as you would to your children, but to throw it away as valueless, fit only for animals. Dogs (κυναρίοις). A contemptuous diminutive, rendered by Wickliffe, "whelpies," or, as we might say, "curs." This was the term applied by the Jews to the Gentiles, even as Turks nowadays talk of "dogs of Christians," and as in later times, by a curious inversion, the Jews themselves were generally saluted with the opprobrious name of"dogs." Some have seen a term of endearment in the diminutive "little dogs," as though Christ desired to soften the harshness of the expression by referring, not to the prowling, unowned animals that act as scavengers in Oriental towns, but to the petted inmates of the master's house. But Scripture gives no warrant for thinking that the Hebrews ever kept dogs as friends and companions, in our modern fashion; and our Lord adopts the language of his countrymen, to put the woman in her right position, as one with whom Jews could have no fellowship. To take the blessings from the Church of Israel in order to give them to aliens was to throw them away on unworthy recipients.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(26) To cast it to dogs.--The word used was diminutive in its form, and as such pointed not to the wild, unclean beasts that haunt the streets of an Eastern city (Psalm 59:6), but to the tamer animals that were bred in the house, and kept as pets. The history of Tobias and his dog, in the Apocrypha, furnishes the one example in Biblical literature of this friendly relation between the dog and his master (Tobit 5:16).The answer has, even taking this into account, a somewhat harsh sound, but it did not go beyond the language with which the woman must have been familiar, and it was probably but a common proverb, like our "Charity begins at home," indicating the line of demarcation which gave a priority to the claims of the family of Israel to those of strangers. We may well believe that there was no intentional scorn in it, though it emphasized an actual distinction.