The Syrophoenician woman, whose daughter was possessed by a demon, hears about Jesus and goes to him while he is in the gentile region near the city of Tyre. She finds him, falls down before him, and asks him to cast the demon out of her daughter, who is not with her, but at home. She hears from Jesus that it is not right for him to do this for her because she and her daughter are, for him, like an unclean animal, like “dogs.” In the words of New Testament scholar Joel Marcus, “the Jews are God’s children, and their needs come first; compared to them, non-Jews are just dogs.”[1]
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