Mark
Chapter 7
1 The Pharisees and some teachers of the Law who were from Jerusalem gathered around him.
2 When they saw some of his followers eating bread with dirty hands, they criticized them.
3 The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they often wash their hands, following the elders’ tradition.
4 When they return from the market, they do not eat unless they wash. They also follow many other rules, like washing cups, pots, metal bowls, and tables.
5 The Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples follow the elders’ traditions, but eat bread with dirty hands?”
6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you fakes, as it is written, ‘These people show me respect with their words, but their hearts are not with me.’”
7 They worship me for nothing, teaching human rules as if they were God’s teachings.
8 You ignore God’s command to follow human traditions, like washing pots and cups, and you do many other similar things.
9 He told them, “You completely ignore God’s command to follow your own tradition.”
10 Moses said, Respect your father and mother; and anyone who speaks badly of their father or mother must be put to death.
11 But you say, if someone tells their father or mother, ‘It is Corban’—which means ‘a gift’—so you cannot benefit from me; then they don’t have to help.
12 And you don’t let him do anything for his father or mother anymore.
13 You make God’s word useless with your tradition that you’ve passed down, and you do many things like that.
14 When he gathered everyone around, he told them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand:”
15 Nothing outside a person can make them unclean by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes them unclean.
16 If anyone can hear, let them listen.
17 After he went into the house away from the crowd, his followers asked him about the story.
18 He asked them, “Do you also not understand? Don’t you realize that nothing entering a person from outside can make them unclean?”
19 It doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach and then out of the body, cleaning out all foods.
20 He said, What comes out of a person is what makes them unclean.
21 From inside, from people’s hearts, come bad thoughts, cheating in marriage, sexual sins, and killings.
22 Stealing, wanting what others have, bad behavior, lying, inappropriate desires, looking to harm others, speaking against God, thinking too highly of oneself, acting without sense.
23 All these bad things start inside a person and make them unclean.
24 He got up from there, went to the area near Tyre and Sidon, went into a house, and did not want anyone to know it, but he could not stay hidden.
25 A woman whose daughter had an evil spirit heard about him, went to him, and knelt down.
26 The woman was Greek, from Syria-Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 Jesus said to her, “Let the children eat first; it’s not right to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”
28 She replied, “Yes, God, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 He told her, “Because of your words, go; the evil spirit has left your daughter.”
30 When she got home, she saw that the demon had left, and her daughter was lying on the bed.
31 Leaving the region of Tyre and Sidon, he went to the Sea of Galilee, passing through the area of Decapolis.
32 They brought to him a person who was deaf and had trouble speaking, and they asked him to touch him.
33 He took the man away from the crowd, put his fingers in the man’s ears, spit, and touched the man’s tongue.
34 Looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.”
35 Right away his ears could hear, his tongue was freed, and he spoke clearly.
36 He told them not to tell anyone, but the more he insisted, the more they spread the news.
37 They were extremely amazed and said, “He does everything well: he makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”