Jesus' words, His answer to the Gentile woman's request that He free her daughter from the power of dark forces, may seem excessively harsh, even cruel. Yet there was no cruelty in them, only the statement of a simple fact obvious to everyone at the time: the world is divided into...
Jesus' words, His answer to the Gentile woman's request that He free her daughter from the power of dark forces, may seem excessively harsh, even cruel. Yet there was no cruelty in them, only the statement of a simple fact obvious to everyone at the time: the world is divided into Jews and Gentiles, into the people of God and all the other nations. This was a fundamental division that could not be ignored.
In this case “dog” is not an insult, but simply a symbol of uncleanness: for a Jew every Gentile was unclean by definition, regardless of the life he led and even of whether he believed in the God of Israel. It is God who cleanses a person. To be clean, one must belong to the people of God, who, as the sages of the Second Temple period taught, constitute a spiritual unity, a kind of single spiritual body. No one can be clean without belonging to it. Gentiles, of course, saw the matter differently; but the woman mentioned in the Gospel story was addressing a Jew and hoping in the power and mercy of the God of Israel, so her own opinions and views were not what mattered in this case.
By comparing Gentiles to dogs, to unclean animals, Jesus thereby makes the matter absolutely clear. The people of God really are the people of God, purity truly matters, and paganism truly stands below Yahwism—as far below as any pagan religion, whatever may lie behind it, stands below the faith of Abraham and Moses. The coming of Christ did not mean that all boundaries became blurred and all distinctions were erased; as such, they remained unchanged. What changed was something else: the general order of things, which, while preserving distinctions and even boundaries where they are appropriate, decisively destroyed every wall and barrier. In the fallen world, making a boundary impassable often becomes the only guarantee of its reliability.
It is not so in the Kingdom: there are no boundaries or distinctions there that cannot be crossed or overcome. Yet the distinctions themselves do not disappear; they merely acquire a new quality and cease to be hostile to one another. These are the distinctions Jesus invites the Gentile woman to accept, and along with them her own spiritual and existential condition as a given. Without accepting herself as she is, she cannot enter the Kingdom.
Naturally, there could be no question of this woman's having a right to her daughter's healing. But in the Kingdom there is no talk of rights at all: rights enter the discussion only when every relationship has been destroyed and each person who once took part in it now feverishly tries to preserve the remnants of what he once possessed in fullness, naturally and freely. The woman accepts the rules of life in the Kingdom: she claims nothing; she merely asks Jesus to enter her life and her daughter's life. Then He does enter, for such trust opens to Him doors that, for the one who opens them, become the doors of the Kingdom.
2 This chapter is an appendix to the history of the creation, explaining, and enlarging on that part of it, which relates immediately to man.We have in it,
2:18 It is not good that man - This man, should be alone - Though there was an upper world of angels, and a lower world of brutes, yet there being none of the same rank of beings with himself, he might be truly said to be alone. And every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air God brought to Adam - Either by the ministry of angels, or by a special instinct that he might name them, and so might give a proof of his knowledge, the names he gave them being expressive of their inmost natures.See note at Gen 2:18
2:21 This was done upon the sixth day, as was also the placing of Adam in paradise, though it be here mentioned after an account of the seventh day's rest: but what was said in general, Gen 1:27, that God made man male and female is more distinctly related here, God caused the sleep to fall on Adam, and made it a deep sleep, that so the opening of his side might be no grievance to him: while he knows no sin, God will take care he shall feel no pain.See note at Gen 2:21
2:23 And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones - Probably it was revealed to Adam in a vision, when he was asleep, that this lovely creature, now presented to him, was a piece of himself and was to be his companion, and the wife of his covenant - In token of his acceptance of her, he gave her a name, not peculiar to her, but common to her sex; she shall be called woman, Isha, a She - man, differing from man in sex only, not in nature; made of man, and joined to man.
2:24 The sabbath and marriage were two ordinances instituted in innocency, the former for the preservation of the church, the latter for the preservation of mankind. It appears by Mat 19:4-5, that it was God himself who said here, a man must leave all his relations to cleave to his wife; but whether he spake it by Moses or by Adam who spake, Gen 2:23 is uncertain: It should seem they are the words of Adam in God's name, laying down this law to all his posterity.The virtue of a divine ordinance, and the bonds of it, are stronger even than those of nature. See how necessary it is that children should take their parents consent with them in their marriage; and how unjust they are to their parents, as well as undutiful, if they marry without it; for they rob them of their right to them, and interest in them, and alienate it to another fraudulently and unnaturally.
2:25 They were both naked, they needed no cloaths for defence against cold or heat, for neither could be injurious to them: they needed none for ornament. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Nay, they needed none for decency, they were naked, and had no reason to be ashamed. They knew not what shame was, so the Chaldee reads it. Blushing is now the colour of virtue, but it was not the colour of innocency.