Matthew 15:24 Commentary and Bible Study

He answers them and she hears the answer. The answer is strange, and doesn’t seem to fit with the disciples’ request. They have asked him to send her away, and his answer seems to refuse their request. He does not send her away, but the reason he gives for this refusal is that she is not an Israelite. In that case, why did he not send her away as they asked? The answer they get is as if they have made a different request – not a request to send her away, but a request to give her what she was asking for. Commentators go different ways on this. Some think that implicit in the disciples request to send her away was an appeal to give her what she was asking for: she would then stop assailing them. They were reluctant to ask him to bless a Gentile, and so asked in this round-about way. Others think that they were truly asking him to send her away without granting her request. Christ does not do so because he intends to bless her, though that is hidden for the moment. He wants however to make it clear that he is following a timetable and that he has come to this region not because he plans immediately to start preaching to the Gentiles. Hendriksen takes the view that the disciples request was not worthy of an answer from the one who was the embodiment of compassion. He therefore ignores them and gives an answer which is further calculated to draw out her response by putting another barrier in her way. He appears to rule her out from receiving any blessing on the grounds that she is not an Israelite: ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ That is my commission, he seems to say, and I must carry it out.