What Does Matthew 15:26 Mean in the King James?
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The refusal hinges on throwing: the next verse shifts the image from bread cast to dogs to crumbs that fall from the table.
THE MEANING
The line confronts the reader with a boundary stated as household order: the children have the bread, while the dogs are excluded from it. Here “meet” translates καλόν (kalon), meaning “good” or “fitting,” so the refusal is framed as proper rather than arbitrary. The next verse lets the woman answer from inside that same image.
THE ROOT
βαλεῖν
balein
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
to throw, cast, or put
“cast” in this verse is balein. The verse does not say merely to hand the bread over: βάλλω (ballō) pictures throwing it. In the next verse, the woman shifts from bread thrown to dogs to crumbs that fall from the table, finding an opening in the image’s own details.
ALSO GROWS
ekballō: to cast out or expel
ἐκβάλλω
It keeps the throwing motion and makes its outward direction explicit.
parabolē: a comparison or parable, built from the idea of placing something beside something else
παραβολή
The same root can set one image beside another; the woman places the table’s falling crumbs beside the stated boundary.
κυναρίοις
kynariois
GROWS FROM
κυν-
kyn-
dog
The Greek uses a diminutive form, often rendered “little dogs,” giving the image a household scale. That does not erase the exclusion: they remain outside the children’s share, beneath the table where the next verse finds them eating crumbs.
ALSO GROWS
kynarion: a little dog, often a household dog
κυνάριον
This is the form used here, making the table setting audible in the Greek.
kynikos: dog-like; the source of “cynic”
κυνικός
The related form preserves the word’s connection to dogs beyond this domestic scene.
τέκνων
teknōn
GROWS FROM
τίκτω
tiktō
to bring forth or give birth; what is brought forth
τέκνα (tekna) names offspring, the children belonging to the household. The woman’s answer does not contest that relationship; it locates even the dogs within the household’s food scene.
ALSO GROWS
teknon: child or offspring
τέκνον
It names the household group whose bread is being discussed.
tokos: birth or offspring; also what is produced
τόκος
It carries the same sense of something brought forth, echoing how the verse defines the children by kinship.
THE PATTERN
A boundary that assigns provision by belonging can be exposed when the person placed outside answers from within its own image.
And Boaz said unto her, At mealtime come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:THE THREAD
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.She does not deny the household order in the metaphor; she sees that the little dogs still eat what falls from the table. This verse uses βάλλω (ballō), “throw,” while her reply uses πίπτω (piptō), “fall”: the image shifts from bread deliberately thrown to crumbs already dropping beyond the children’s loaf.
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