All this resolves into a higher harmony those small seeming discrepancies, which negative criticism had tried to magnify into contradictions. It also adds graphic details to the story. She who now sought His help was, as St. Matthew calls her, from the Jewish standpoint, a Canaanitish [3488] woman,' by which term a Jew would designate a native of Phoenicia, or, as St. Mark calls her, a Syro-Phoenician (to distinguish her country from Lybo-Phoenicia), and a Greek' - that is, a heathen. But, we can understand how she who, as Bengel says, made the misery of her little child her own, would, on hearing of the Christ and His mighty deed, seek His help with the most intense earnestness, and that, in so doing, she would approach Him with lowliest reverence, falling at His Feet. [3489] But what in the circumstances seems so peculiar, and, in our view, furnishes the explanation of the Lord's bearing towards this woman, is her mode of addressing Him: O Lord, Thou Son of David!' This was the most distinctively Jewish appellation of the Messiah; and yet it is emphatically stated of her, that she was a heathen. Tradition has preserved a few reported sayings of Christ, of which that about to be quoted seems, at least, quite Christ-like. It is reported that, having seen a man working on the Sabbath, He said: "O man, if indeed thou knowest what thou doest, thou are blessed; but if thou knowest not, thou are cursed, and art a transgressor of the Law."' [3490] The same principle applied to the address of this woman - only that, in what followed, Christ imparted to her the knowledge needful to make her blessed.
Spoken by a heathen, these words were an appeal, not to the Messiah of Israel, but to an Israelitish Messiah - for David had never reigned over her or her people. The title might be most rightfully used, if the promises to David were fully and spiritually apprehended - not otherwise. If used without that knowledge, it was an address by a stranger to a Jewish Messiah, Whose works were only miracles, and not also and primarily signs. Now this was exactly the error of the Jews which Jesus had encountered and combated, alike when He resisted the attempt to make Him King, in His reply to the Jerusalem Scribes, and in His Discourses at Capernaum. To have granted her the help she so entreated, would have been, as it were, to reverse the whole of His Teaching, and to make His works of healing merely works of power. For, it will not be contended that this heathen woman had full spiritual knowledge of the world-wide bearing of the Davidic promises, or of the world embracing designation of the Messiah as the Son of David. In her mouth, then, it meant something to which Christ could not have yielded. And yet He could not refuse her petition. And so He first taught her, in such manner as she could understand - that which she needed to know, before she could approach Him in such manner - the relation of the heathen to the Jewish world, and of both to the Messiah, and then He gave her what she asked.
It is this, we feel convinced, which explains all. It could not have been, that from His human standpoint He first kept silence, His deep tenderness and sympathy forbidding Him to speak, while the normal limitation of His Mission forbade Him to act as she sought. [3491] Such limitations could not have existed in His mind; nor can we suppose such an utter separation of His Human from His Divine consciousness in His Messianic acting. And we recoil from the opposite explanation, which supposes Christ to have either tried the faith of the woman, or else spoken with a view to drawing it out. We shrink from the idea of anything like an after-thought, even for a good purpose, on the part of the Divine Saviour. All such afterthoughts are, to our thinking, incompatible with His Divine Purity and absolute rectitude. God does not make us good by a device - and that is a very wrong view of trials, or of delayed answers to prayer, which men sometimes take. Nor can we imagine, that the Lord would have made such cruel trial of the poor agonised woman, or played on her feelings, when the issue would have been so unspeakable terrible, if in her weakness she had failed. There is nothing analogous in the case of this poor heathen coming to petition, and being tried by being told that she could not be heard, because she belonged to the dogs, not the children, and the trial of Abraham, who was a hero of faith, and had long walked with God. In any case, on any of the views just combated, the Words of Jesus would bear a needless and inconceivable harshness, which grates on all our feelings concerning Him. The Lord does not afflict willingly, nor try needlessly, nor disguise His loving thoughts and purposes, in order to bring about some effect in us. He needs not such means; and, with reverence be it said, we cannot believe that He ever uses them.