But ritual uncleanliness is never mentioned just as it is not in the episode with the hemorrhaging woman and Jairus’ daughter. This I suspect is deliberate. But more importantly for us, we should notice the escalation in Mark. In the subsequent part of chapter as we noticed, Jesus is first made unclean for the rest of the day, then makes himself unclean for seven days, yet here at the beginning of the chapter he is surrounded by uncleanliness but is never made unclean nor makes himself unclean. Rather, uncleanliness is not mentioned. The message would be clear to Mark’s audience. The notion of uncleanliness brings us to the heart of the issue which, though noticed, is largely ignored, yet leads us to a full explanation of the episode. Jesus is a Jew: the demoniac is a Gentile, as are the swineherds (of course), as are the inhabitants of the region. In Mark, Jesus’ mission is decidedly not to the Gentiles, but only to the Jews. Nothing brings this out more clearly than Mark .-. The woman is specifically a Gentile: a Greek expressly of Syrophoenician origin. In that context Claude G. Montefiore writes: “Jesus very clearly, and apparently somewhat roughly, states that his mission is VI . From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. . Now the woman was a Gentile [literally, ‘Greek’], of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. . He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” . But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” . Then he said to her, “For saying that you may go--the demon has left your daughter.” . So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
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