Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The faith of a gentile is rewarded

^24-27 Then he got up and left that place and went off to the neighbourhood of Tyre. There he went into a house and wanted no one to know where he was. But it proved impossible to remain hidden. For no sooner had he got there, than a woman who had heard about him, and who had a daughter possessed by an evil spirit, arrived and prostrated herself before him. She was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she asked him to drive the evil spirit out of her daughter. Jesus said to her, “You must let the children have all they want first. It is not right, you know, to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ But she replied, “Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under the table eat what the children leave.”

²⁹ “If you can answer like that,” Jesus said to her, “you can go home! The evil spirit has left your daughter.”

³⁰ And she went back home and found the child lying quietly on her bed, and the evil spirit gone.