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You don't give food for children to dogs

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on October 12, 2007

In Reply to: You don't give food for children to dogs posted by KH on October 12, 2007

:
: "You don't give food for children to dogs"

: I am trying to find out if anyone knows of this phrase, origin or meaning?

I don't think it's a "phrase" as such (it gets no Google hits), but it's a paraphrase of a saying of Jesus, reported in Matthew xv. 21-28 and Mark vii. 24-30. A Canaanitish or Syro-Phoenician (i.e. not Jewish) woman had a daughter possessed by a demon. The text in Matthew is:

She came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.

And he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. [In other words, "why do you think I should help you, since my job is to preach to the Jews, not foreigners of a different religion like you?"]
But she said, Yea, Lord: for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
(VSD)

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