Jesus had left Jewish territory because the masses crowded him and he needed a short vacation to rest with and teach his disciples (v. 21; compare 16:13); but this stage of his mission was for Israel alone (compare 28:19). Thus when his disciples ask him to send the woman away (15:23), he notes the limitation of his mission (v. 24; compare 10:6; Rom 15:8). Yet he did not send her away as his disciples requested, which may have encouraged her to persevere (compare 19:13; 20:31). To her own insistent entreaty (15:25) Jesus responds with almost equal firmness (v. 26). Some Jewish teachers would have reached out to the woman, hoping to make her a proselyte (see, for example, Jos. Ant. 20.34-36; Apion 2.210; m. 'Abot 1:12; Goppelt 1964:54); Jesus simply snubs her.

The language in Mark is somewhat milder: that the children must be fed "first" (Mk 7:27) allows for the possibility of a later healing and a window for the coming Gentile mission (Hurtado 1983:103), but even in Mark the woman's need is too urgent for that. Jesus probably refers to children's pet dogs; well-to-do Greeks, unlike Jews, could raise dogs as pets and not view them merely as troublesome pests (compare Lk 16:21; Ex 22:31). The image is thus simply one of children's needs (compare 7:9) taking temporal precedence over those of pets (Lane 1974:262; Anderson 1976:191). Such an admission, however, hardly transforms the image into a compliment (compare 7:6).

Jesus is not cursing the woman, but he is putting her off (compare 8:7). It is possible that he is testing her, as teachers sometimes tested their disciples (Jn 6:6; Lev. Rab. 22:6), but he is certainly reluctant to grant her request and is providing an obstacle for her faith (compare Jn 2:4). Perhaps he is requiring her to understand his true mission and identity, lest she treat him as one of the many wandering magicians to whom Gentiles sometimes appealed for exorcisms. Yet he is surely also summoning her to recognize Israel's priority in the divine plan, a recognition that for her will include an admission of her dependent status. (One may compare Elisha's requirement that Naaman dip in the Jordan despite Naaman's preference for the Aramean rivers Abana and Pharpar in 2 Kings 5:10-12, ultimately leading to Naaman's acknowledgment of Israel's God and land in 2 Kings 5:17-18.) For one of her social status (an elite "Greek" citizen of Syro-Phoenician race, in Mark's account) this was a dramatic reversal indeed (see Theissen 1991:66-80); but by calling her a Canaanite, Matthew's account mutes the class issue, properly focusing instead on the racial issue, which is more relevant to his own audience.