17
After He had left the crowd and gone indoors, His disciples began to ask Him about this figure of speech.
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"Have *you* also so little understanding?" He replied; "do you not understand that anything whatever that enters a man from outside cannot make him unclean,
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because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and passes away ejected from him?" By these words Jesus pronounced all kinds of food clean.
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"What comes out of a man," He added, "that it is which makes him unclean.
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For from within, out of men's hearts, their evil purposes proceed--fornication, theft, murder, adultery,
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covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, reviling, pride, reckless folly:
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all these wicked things come out from within and make a man unclean."
24
Then He rose and left that place and went into the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon. Here He entered a house and wished no one to know it, but He could not escape observation.
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Forthwith a woman whose little daughter was possessed by a foul spirit heard of Him, and came and flung herself at His feet.
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She was a Gentile woman, a Syro-phoenician by nation: and again and again she begged Him to expel the demon from her daughter.
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"Let the children first eat all they want," He said; "it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."