Matthew 15:22 Commentary and Bible Study

She cried after him, Matthew says, with great urgency, and both Matthew and Mark use the imperfect tense, indicating that she did this repeatedly. The woman appears to have come to the house which he had entered. She went on, crying after him. His one caller calls and calls for help and for healing. She says to him, ‘Have mercy on me, thou Son of David.’ She had more than heard of Christ; she had heard a great deal about him. Perhaps there were quite a few up there in Phoenicia who had taken note of the teaching about Messiah in Israel. The Israelites were largely non-responsive at this time, but here is a woman up in Phoenicia addressing him as, ‘Thou Son of David,’ promised Messiah, man of compassion, the great descendant of Adam and of King David, who is God as well as man, who has come to deliver from sin and to draw people to himself. She knew all about that and she believed in him and trusted in him. So Christ receives a call from a believer, because up to a point she is a believer. She believes in the Messiah of Israel, even though her own region, her own nation, is fiercely anti-Israelite. Yet she is one of those who have heard of him and taken note. She seems to have said to herself, ‘We don't have a Messiah.’ She was a member of a polytheistic nation. ‘We have many gods and one principal idol that we worship in Phoenician territory, but our gods have no power; our gods have no personhood. They don't live; you cannot communicate with them. You can only appease them; you can only buy them off from giving you ill fortune. But Israel has a one living God, and a Messiah to come who is going to deliver from sin and forgive. This is him and we' have been hearing about him in Phoenicia: that he forgives sin, that he heals thousands, that he can cast out demons, that he is a man of great holiness and character. He is surely the God man expected, far higher and better than anything that we have up here in Phoenician.’ So she believed in him, and she comes to him.