Bible Discussion Thread

This chapter has given me some difficulty, as is hard to understand how Christ himself might use such language. What I think explains this, rather than it being simply a rude outbust, is firstly he calls, likens, the lost sheep of Israel children. To me, this suggests that Christ may have deemed them as being childish, which is made more likely given that the chapter begins with His encounter with the scribes and Pharisees, whose behaviour may have appeared to Him that way and been somewhat representitive of the behaviour of Israelites. As for calling the Caanite woman a dog, we can assume He didn 't mean that she was literally a dog, as the lost sheep obviously aren 't literally children. Perhaps the Canaanites where not typically interested in the God of Israel or becoming Israelites, which I believe could have been possible given Leviticus 19:33-34 and Ezekiel 47:21-23, but were interesting in being healed, and perhaps given to being bothersome, in the way a dog might. Does anyone have any other ideas that might help me to understand about this better?

Hi John! Yes that can be tough to get at first glance... The Lord is always loving and sympathetic of heart in all that He does.... The best commentary I have read is in the Desire of Ages, Chapter 43, Barriers Broken Down. You can google it. Online free book.