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Mat_15:24. Those words are addressed to the disciples (comp. note on Mat_10:6); the answer to the woman comes afterwards in Mat_15:26.
It is usually supposed that what Jesus had in view was merely to put her confidence in Him to the test (Ebrard, Baur, Schenkel, Weiss); whilst Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Luther, Glöckler, assert that His aim was to furnish her with an opportunity for displaying her faith. But the moral sense protests against this apparent cruelty of playing the part of a dissembler with the very intention of tormenting; it rather prefers to recognise in our Lord’s demeanour a sincere disposition to repel, which, however, is subsequently conquered by the woman’s unshaken trust (Chrysostom: καλὴν ἀναισχυντίαν ). Ewald appropriately observes how, on this occasion, Jesus shows His greatness in a twofold way: first, in prudently and resolutely confining Himself to the sphere of His own country; and then in no less thoughtfully overstepping this limit whenever a higher reason rendered it proper to do so, and as if to foreshadow what was going to take place a little farther on in the future.
It was not intended that Christ should come to the Gentiles in the days of His flesh, but that He should do so at a subsequent period (Mat_28:19), in the person of the Spirit acting through the medium of apostolic preaching (Joh_10:16; Eph_2:17). But the difficulty of reconciling this with Mat_8:5, Mat_11:12, on which Hilgenfeld lays some stress, as being in favour of our present narrative, is somewhat lessened by the fact that, according to Luk_7:2 ff., the centurion was living in the heart of the people, and might be said to be already pretty much identified with Judaism; whereas we have a complete stranger in the case of the woman, before whom Jesus sees Himself called upon, in consequence of their request, Mat_15:23, strictly to point out to His disciples that His mission, so far as its fundamental object was concerned, was to be confined exclusively to Israel. Volkmar, indeed, makes out that the words were never spoken at all; that their teaching is of a questionable nature; and that the whole thing is an imitation of the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17); while Scholten, p. 213, regards it merely as a symbolical representation of the relation of the Gentile world to the kingdom of God, and which had come to be treated as a fact.