The Pulpit Commentary — Mark — Volume 1 — Section 323

Vers. 24-30. Parallel passage: Matt. xv. 21-28.-Daughter of a Syro-phamician 1voman heakd. L Otra Loao's WITHDRAWAL INTO THE REGION OP TYRE AND SmoN. Our Lord's retirement at this time into the region indicated was probably occasioned by a desire t.o avoid the further attention and inquiries of Herod, and perhaps his presence also there in his tetrarchy, which comprised Galilee and Pel'8la; while it may have been a symbolic intimation of the mercy in store for, and ere long to be extended to, Gentile lands; or it may have been simply for the purpose of seclusion and rest after a time of toil, and t.o escape from the cavils of scribes and Pharisees. The territory here described as "the borders of Tyre and Sidon" was not a district inter- jacent between Tyre and Sidon, as Erasmus understood it; nor yet the territory proper of Tyre and Sidon, as Fritzsche explained it; or the neighbourhood of the former city, as Alford took its meaning to be ; bnt originally a tract of border-land or neutral ground which Be)llU'&ted Palestine from Phcenicia, subsequently ceded by Solomon to the King of Tyre and incorporated with PhamiciA, yet still retaining its ancient name of border- land. II. Tim APPLICANT, .um BEB WBETCBEDNESS. This applicant is called by St. Matthew a Canaaniti.sh woman, and by St. Mark a Syro-phcenician. Phcenicia, in which the old and famous commercial cities of Tyre (from Tzor, "a rock," now Swr)' and Sidon (from Tsidon, "fi.shery," now Saida, twenty miles further north) were situated, was part of ancient Canaan, and so inhabited by a remnant of that doomed race. But, as the l'hamicians were the great seafarers and colonizers of ancient times, they had sent ont and founded many settlement& One of these was in Africa, and the colonists were distingnished by the appropriate name of Liby-phcenicians, from the parent stock which went by the name of Syro-phcenicians. Horace has the expression, "Uterque Prenus serviat uni," and Juvenal twice employs the word "Syro-phrenix." It is probable that, while the coast-line retained the name Phcenicia, the more inland pa.rte, where Syrian and Phamician intermingled, got the name of Syro-phcenicia. But, while this woman was a Syro-phcenician by race, she was a Greek, that is, a Gentile; for the name Greek was used generally for all Gentiles, as distinguished from Jews, just as Frank is employed in the East for all Europeans; thus, we read in Rom. i. 16, "To the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Thus Greek was the same as Gentile, and the inhabitants of the world were distributed into Greeks and Jews. The applicant, then, in the narrative under consideration, belonged to a different nationality from the Jews, for she was a Syro- phcenician, and to a different religion, for she was a heathen. This poor woman, bom and bred amid the darkness of heathenism, with little to sustain and comfort her in this world, and without hope for a better, had her full share of the miseries of mortal life. She appears from the narrative to have been a widow, as there is no mention or notice of her husband. If so-and we have no reason to doubt it-she had to bear the hardships and fight the battle of life alone, without the head of her little household, without the bread-winner of her family, and without a partner to share and so divide the CWTent of her grief. She had a daughter, probably an only daughter, mayhap an only child; but that one daughter, that only child, instead of being a source of comfort or support to the widowed mother, was the cause of the great grief that pressed upon m, vu. 1- 3i.] THE GOSPEL AIJCORDING TO ST. MAP.K. 321