This blog owes much to the many discussions about this woman, her story, and the Gospel of Matthew, that I have had over many years with my wife, Elizabeth Raine. She has undertaken quite detailed research into this story, which is reflected at many points in the blog that follows.
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Jesus meets a woman. She is distressed—shouting and pleading, then debating and arguing. She has a daughter who is seriously unwell: “tormented by a demon” is the way she describes it (Matt 15:22). We fully expect Jesus to subdue her, to demonstrate his power, and to heal her daughter.
But this is a striking, dramatic story: in the way that Matthew tells this story, it is not Jesus who exercises power; rather, it is the woman who gets the best of Jesus. Her snappy response to his seemingly dismissive words, wins her the debate. Jesus acknowledges this. “Great is your faith”, he affirms (15:28). And he heals her immediately. Her request is granted.
The woman is a Canaanite. The geography is important. In the earlier version of this story, found in Mark’s Gospel, she is presented as a Syro-Phoenician (7:26), from the territory outside of Israel, to the northwest. “Syro-Phoenician” was a Roman invention, a description imposed on the northern region of Phoenicia, which was close to the region of Syria, by the Romans when they conquered the area. It is the area we know today as the nation of Lebanon. This woman, Mark would have us know, is a Gentile (7:26), from this area just outside the boundaries of Israel.
In Matthew, she is a Canaanite (15:22). In this account, there is no reference at all to the notion that she is a Gentile. In Matthew’s Gospel, the word “Gentile” is nearly always used as a pejorative term (5:47; 6:7, 32; 18:17), which suggests that few, if any, Gentiles were to be found in Matthew’s community. Matthew has redacted Mark’s account, so that any reference to her Gentile status has been removed.
Through this redaction, the identity of the woman is reshaped, such that she becomes a person indigenous to the area that was invaded and settled by the Hebrews, centuries before. Her origins lie within the area designated, by political force, as the homeland of the people of Israel. She falls within the scope of “the house of Israel” that is the primary focus for Jesus in this Gospel (10:6; 15:24). Indeed, she is one of the servants in this house, waiting at the table of the masters—the people of Israel (15:27).
The geography is important. For Matthew, this is not Jesus encountering a Gentile. She is a person of the land—albeit, not a descendant of the Hebrews, but a person of the land of Canaan. She is no mere Gentile. She is indigenous to the area, a people settled there from prior to the time of Hebrew invasion.
The woman in this story is a pointed reminder of the invading, colonising force of the Hebrews, power exercised over the indigenous people, the Canaanites—a story of violence and destruction, recounted (from the victor’s point of view) in the book of Joshua. Her subservient status indicates the power of the conquering Hebrews. This story is thus heavily weighted with past stories of power, domination, and violence. Will the encounter between Jesus and this woman have the same colonising outcome? Will she, like her people before, be subservient and defeated?
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The woman has her base, now, not in Canaan, the land invaded and colonised by the Hebrews. She lives in the region of Tyre and Sidon. Those towns already have a reputation for arrogance and intransigence. The prophet Isaiah spoke an oracle of condemnation over Sidon, “the merchant of the nations”, and Tyre, “whose merchants were princes, whose traders were the honoured of the earth” (Isa 23:1-18). The abundance that was generated through their trade and commerce was stored and hoarded, in defiance of the Lord.
The prophet Ezekiel also condemns Tyre (Ezek 28:1-19), whose “heart has become proud in your wealth”, and then Sidon (Ezek 28:20-24), one of the many neighbours of Israel “who have treated them with contempt”.
And these cities have already figured in what Jesus has said, prior to this incident. Matthew reports the words of Jesus which notes that the experience of judgement for Chorazin and Bethsaida will be “more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you” (11:21-22). They will encounter the punishment of divine judgement—not as severely as Chorazin and Bethsaida, but still deserving of punishment, it would seem.
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Matthew tells us that the woman comes out from that region. Jesus had set out towards that region, but she comes out, intercepts him, meets him on the edge, the border between Jewish and Gentile lands (15:21-22). In Mark, Jesus goes into the region of Tyre, and enters a house in that region. That is typical of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel; he is regularly “in a house” (Mark 1:29, 2:15, 2:26, 5:35, 38, 6:10, 7:17, 9:28, 33, 10:10, 14:3).
Most of those occasions when Jesus is “in the house” are repeated in Matthew’s account (Matt 8:14, 9:10, 23, 28, 10:6, 12–13, 12:4, 13:36, 26:6). But not this occasion, with the woman in Tyre—in Matthew’s account, there is no reference to Jesus entering the woman’s house. He does not step over the threshold, into her place of living. Indeed, he does not step over the threshold, out of Israel, into Gentile territory. He remains resolutely on Jewish land.
Yet, here Jesus at the border: at the liminal space, on the edge of his homeland, right on the threshold, but still within his territory. He encounters a woman from across the border, yet a woman whose origins place her in the homeland, in the land of the house of Israel, an indigenous woman of Canaan encountering a Jewish man of Nazareth. The geography is important.
The persistence of this woman bears fruit for her, personally: Jesus relents and heals her daughter—even though she was not one of “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24). Indeed, the persistence of this woman enables Matthew to report that his Jesus reinforces and underlines his strong commitment to the people of Israel—to them, first and foremost, and solely, to his own people.
The declaration of Jesus in this story (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, 15:24) reinforces and intensifies his earlier instruction to his disciples (“Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, 10:5-6). The Jesus of Matthew, throughout the 27 chapters of his earthly life, remains resolutely focussed on the people of Israel. Geography is important.
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And yet, the story ends with Jesus commending the Canaanite woman: “woman, great is your faith” (15:28). And on the basis of this faith, Jesus heals her daughter; the demon is cast out “instantly”. Such a commendation of someone who is not of the people of Israel (although, like the Canaanite woman, was nevertheless among those people) is also given by Jesus to the centurion whose servant was “lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress” (8:6). The centurion is highly commended by Jesus: “truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith” (8:10). The servant, like the daughter, is healed immediately (“in that hour”, 8:13).
The same affirmation of faith is expressed in encounters which lead to a number of healings while Jesus was in his home town (9:1). Jesus first heals a bedridden man with paralysis—on the basis of the faith of his friends, who have brought him to Jesus (9:2). Soon after, perhaps while he is still in the same region, Jesus heals a haemorrhaging woman (“take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well”, 9:22) and then two blind men (“according to your faith let it be done to you”, 9:29).
These encounters, where Jesus commends the faith of Gentiles and Jews alike, provide a stark contrast to the frustration that Jesus later expresses when he berates his disciples as those of “little faith”: “you faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? how much longer must I put up with you?” (17:17).
It is not the disciples, however, who are ultimately in peril of rejection by Jesus. He later says to the Jews, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom” (21:43). These words are directed towards the chief priests and Pharisees (as 21:45 indicates), who will be excluded from God’s kingdom.
For Jesus, it is those Jews who “produce the fruits of the kingdom” who will be given entry to the kingdom. Those who do “produce the fruits of the kingdom” include those normally considered as “unclean” by the Pharisees, and therefore outcasts or rejects from Judaism (9:10–13; 21:31, 32). They are the ones who join the healed men and women, the centurion whose slave was healed and the mother whose daughter was healed, as models of faith who will enter the kingdom.
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Like so many women in the strongly patriarchal world of the ancient world, this woman is anonymous in both passages where she appears in scripture (Mark 7 and Matt 15). However, beyond the pages of the New Testament, she is gifted with a name, Justa—in the same way that the unnamed woman of Samaria who encountered Jesus (in John 4) is gifted with a name by later Christian writers. (She gains the name Photini—and she also becomes a saint; see
Not only is this woman named in later Christian writing, but it is very clear that she is a believer. In the Clementine Homilies, a third century work, the story of the encounter between Jesus as Justa, as she is named, is retold, clarified, and expanded in Homily II, Chapter XIX. Jesus says to her, “It is not lawful to heal the Gentiles, who are like to dogs on account of their using various meats and practices, while the table in the kingdom has been given to the sons of Israel.” She is numbered among those “sons of Israel”; this woman’s faith in Jesus assures her of a place in the church. See
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This story is a favourite of my wife. It figured in a significant way in the postgraduate research that she undertook in relation to Matthew’s Gospel. Elizabeth and I have often discussed this story and taught it to lots of students. I am grateful for the insights and stimulus for understanding that she has provided me. Thanks to this feisty women from the past, and for the provocations that her story has provided to so many people over the years!
See also
An Informed Faith 