This is a remarkable chapter, as, besides continuing the controversy with the Pharisees, we have the relationship with Israel fully maintained, yet on higher ground, and eternal principles, both as to man and God, brought out to light. The state of man's heart is brought into contrast with ceremonial priestly righteousness. Israel judged on this ground according to her own prophets-plants not of the Father's planting, morally speaking, not true children of God, would be rooted up. But the true evil of the human heart, as such, is taught, and then Jesus, who really brought God in grace to man, goes beyond the limits of Israel, and to one accursed according 'to dispensational view, manifests God's heart, the necessary goodness of God who cannot deny Himself, maintains fully the title of Israel, but recognizes faith, blessing the worst of Gentiles, when this was laying hold by grace of what God was. He then, moreover, shows the maintenance of the same grace towards Israel, in spite of its evil, and, I think, on a higher ground, though a smaller sphere, as heretofore noticed—not the administrative blessing of a whole in man, but the sovereign goodness of God whatever man was (verse 7, not 12) but still Jehovah, according to Psa. 132, in Israel. In chapter 16 the judgment of Israel continues, but the Church is substituted for it, and He declares He is to suffer, and not to be announced as the Christ.
27. How evidently the poor woman gets at what God is, and that He cannot deny Himself, and that outside all promise and dispensation.