The Amateur Exegete

Bible Study for Amateurs #62 – Crumbs from the Table, part 2

In the last episode we started looking at the story of the Canaanite woman from Matthew 15:21-28 using Gail O’Day’s piece “Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman” that appeared in the volume A Feminist Companion to Matthew.1 We ended by noting how the Matthean Evangelist uses language from the Jewish scriptures to tell the story, coupling Tyre and Sidon and changing Mark’s reference to the Syrophoenician woman to a Canaanite one. As O’Day observes, given the narrative context of the story, coming on the heels of questions about ritual impurity, along with the geographic context in non-Jewish territory, the question arises as to how Jesus will treat this penitent Canaanite. “Will [she] be welcomed as an occasion for Gentile mission (cf. Mt. 8.5-13), or rebuffed as an outsider, an enemy?” she queries (p. 116)

Part two of O’Day’s piece deals with the form of the pericope. The word “form” simply refers to the type of story that it is: Is it a healing narrative or sayings story or something else? Such questions were part and parcel of the work of the form critics, scholars who were interested in the genres that comprised pericopes.2 By and large, form criticism has fallen out of use, though its importance to biblical studies endures. When O’Day wrote this piece, form criticism was reaching the end of its dominance in New Testament studies, succeeded by literary and redaction criticism. Regardless, there is still much to be gleaned from O’Day’s handling of the passage. 

As she notes, form critics had a difficult time assessing this particular story in Matthew. It isn’t quite a miracle story but it isn’t a sayings story either. One of the problems that O’Day identifies is that for form critics the working assumption was that in each discrete unit Jesus was the protagonist. Thus, a healing story was a healing story because Jesus did the healing. A sayings-story was a sayings-story because Jesus did the speaking. But this story, O’Day contends, defies that assumption: “In our story…Jesus is not the protagonist; the Canaanite woman is,” she writes (p. 117). She shows this by noting how the account can be broken down into three sections. Beginning in v. 22 and concluding with v. 23a we have the interaction of the Canaanite woman with Jesus. In vv. 23b-24, we have the interaction with Jesus and the disciples. And finally, in vv. 25-28, the interaction between the Canaanite woman and Jesus reaches its conclusion. O’Day writes that “the story’s development hinges on the Canaanite woman” (p. 117). 

In the story, the woman remains at the center both by her persistence and by reactions to her. For example, when the disciples urge Jesus to send her away, they become – in O’Day’s words – her “unwitting allies” because in their attempt to have her dismissed they “actually function to keep her in view” (p. 118). Additionally, the Evangelist paints a picture of Jesus that is quite passive: he “initiates nothing in this story,” writes O’Day. She goes on to write, “Any attempt to classify this text by placing Jesus at its center will ultimately be inadequate. We must instead look to the Canaanite woman’s daring insistence as the key to the distinctive shape and form of this text” (p. 118). And what do we find when we look at the Canaanite woman’s words? 

That is the subject of part 3 of O’Day’s piece. She begins by urging her readers to listen to the woman’s words because in them we can detect echoes of ancient scripture, specifically songs of lament. When she cries out to Jesus, “Have mercy on me” in v. 22, there is a hint of texts like Psalm 69:16 – “Answer me, O LORD, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me” (NRSV).3 When she pleads in v. 25, “Lord help me,” there is an echo of Psalm 109:26 – “Help me, O LORD my God! Save me according to your steadfast love.” “The very boldness of the woman’s stance before Jesus,” writes O’Day, “has its roots in Israel’s bold stance before God in the laments. The form which helps readers understand Mt. 15.21-28 is neither a miracle story nor apophthegm, but the psalm of lament” (p. 119). What is a psalm of lament?

In his introduction to the book of Psalms for the HarperCollins Study Bible, Patrick Miller writes that psalms of lament “were prayed in situations of severe distress, although the particular circumstances out of which they originated are no longer discernable except in the broadest sense.”4 Sometimes they appear as individual laments: “Give ear to my words, O LORD; give heed to my sighing,” writes the psalmist in Psalm 5:1. Others are communal: “Rise up, come to our help,” reads the end of Psalm 44. “Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”5

Whether individual or communal, songs of lament follow a general pattern. O’Day offers five features that often appear in a lament: (1) an address to God; (2) the registering of a complaint; (3) a petition for God to act; (4) giving of motivations for why the deity would want to act; (5) imprecations. Carleen Mandolfo in her chapter on lament psalms for The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms offers a similar schema: (1) an invocation to God; (2) the registering of a complaint; (3) a request for God to act; (4) an expression of confidence in the deity; (5) a vow of praise.6 Mandolfo goes on to write, “Not every lament psalm exhibits each of these features, and, in any case, these elements are more common to individual than communal laments.”7 For example, communal laments may have long sections rehearsing the historical circumstances that brought about the present state. In her piece, O’Day looks at Psalm 13, an individual lament, as a paradigmatic example of a lament psalm to which she compares the Canaanite woman’s plea. It is to that psalm we will turn in the next episode.

That’s all the time we’ve got this week. See you next time! And remember, in the words of Richard Elliot Friedman, “One does not need to deny what is troubling [about the Bible] in order to pay respect to what is heartening.” Thanks for stopping by.

  1. Gail R. O’Day, “Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman,” in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 114-125. ↩︎
  2. For an overview, see Kenton L. Sparks, “Form Criticism,” in Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation, edited by Stanley E. Porter (London: Routledge, 2007), 111-114. For an extended discussion, see David R. Law, The Historical-Critical Method: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2012), 140-180. Interestingly, Law uses form criticism to analyze Matthew 15:21-28 as well. ↩︎
  3. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version. ↩︎
  4. Patrick D. Miller, “The Psalms,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible, fully revised and updated, edited by Harold W. Attridge (New York: HarperOne, 2006), 733. ↩︎
  5. See Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 458. ↩︎
  6. Carleen Mandolfo, “Language of Lament in the Psalms,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms, edited by William P. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 115-116. ↩︎
  7. Mandolfo, “Language of Lament in the Psalms,” 116. ↩︎
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