What Does Matthew 15:17 Mean?
Do you not yet perceive that whatever enters the mouth makes its way into the belly, and is thrown out into the drain?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?THE KEY
What enters the body travels through it and leaves; passing through you is not the same as becoming your nature.
THE MEANING
Your body receives what comes through the mouth, carries it into the belly, and expels it. What passes through your body is distinct from what proceeds from within you. The next verse names the heart as the source of what defiles.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that consuming something automatically makes you inwardly defiled; bodily passage and what comes from the heart are distinct.
THE ROOT
εἰσπορευόμενον
eisporeuomenon
GROWS FROM
πορευ-
poreu-
To go, proceed, or travel.
The word for what “entereth” is built on a verb meaning to go or travel. In Mark’s parallel, the word for what “goeth out” uses the same base with the opposite direction, revealing the body as a passage with an entry and an exit.
ALSO GROWS
eisporeuomai: Go in, enter.
εἰσπορεύομαι
The prefix εἰς (eis, into) directs the movement inward, as food enters the body here.
ekporeuomai: Go out, come forth.
ἐκπορεύομαι
Mark 7:19 uses this matched form for what exits, showing entry and exit as two directions of the same movement.
poreia: Journey, way.
πορεία
This related word carries the sense of movement along a way, underscoring that what enters follows a passage through the body.
THE PATTERN
What the body takes in follows a physical passage, while the heart and life cannot be reduced to food.
But what comes out of the mouth comes forth from the heart, and that makes a person common.Food is for the belly, and the belly for food; but God will make both of them idle. The body is not for the selling, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.Therefore I say to you, do not be pulled apart over your living soul, over what you will eat or what you will drink, nor over your body, over what you will put on. Is not the living soul more than food, and the body more than clothing?THE THREAD
Because it does not enter his heart, but into his belly, and goes out into the drain, cleansing all foods?The Greek pairs a form of εἰσπορεύομαι (eisporeuomai, go in) with ἐκπορεύομαι (ekporeuomai, go out), sharing the root πορευ- (poreu-, go or travel). The same movement enters and exits, making clear that food passes through the body without becoming the heart.
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