05.41. Crumbs of Grace for Gentile Dogs

41. — Crumbs of Grace for Gentile Dogs

"And from thence he arose, and went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered into a house, and would have no man know it: and he could not be hid. But straightway a woman, whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, having heard of him, came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by race. And she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. And he said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs. But she answered and saith unto him, Yea, Lord; even the dogs under the table eat of the children’s* crumbs. And he saith unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. And she went away unto her house, and found the child laid upon the bed, and the devil gone out" (Mark 7:24-30, R.V.).

{*The woman uses a different word for children. The Lord said, It is not meet to take of the bread of theteknon,that is, the natural-born children of the family. She replied that the dogs might receive crumbs from thepaidion,that is from the little ones of the household, which would include the servants.} The time was now approaching when the Servant of the Lord would complete His ministry of grace in Galilee, and would go up to Jerusalem to deliver His final testimony to the "daughter of Zion." And we find from the Gospel records that in the later journeyings of Jesus in Galilee, there were some notable occasions when the grace and truth of which He was "full" overflowed to those of Gentile blood. These examples, amongst which that of the Syro-phoenician woman is not the least striking, were foreshadowings of the (then) coming time of unrestricted grace when it would be proclaimed to all men that the Lord of all is rich unto all that call upon Him (Romans 10:10). At Capernaum the Pharisees in their religious pride stumbled at the saying of the Lord (Matthew 15:12) that the heart of man is the true seat of his spiritual defilement, sin spreading outwards from this inward source like a leprous disease. These Jewish teachers refused to believe in Jesus and in His word, condemning their tradition as it did: hence they were "confounded," and missed receiving that purification of heart which comes alike to Jews and Gentiles who believe (Acts 15:9). But it was made clear in the days of the Lord that if they of the favoured nation stumbled at the Stumbling-stone through unbelief, heathen strangers, humbly confessing the extremity of their needs, would stretch out arms of entreaty and faith to the mercy of Jehovah that was then visiting the people of His covenant. And in His zeal to help the needy He showed that no plaint for pity should be addressed in vain to the just and lowly King of Israel, not even the voice of a Canaanite. In accordance with this purpose we here read that "from thence he arose, and went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon."

Tyre and Sidon The geographical limits of our Lord’s ministry were much circumscribed in comparison with those assigned by Him to His followers at His departure. His own service was confined to the "cities of Israel," that of the apostles in His absence was extended to the ends of the earth. When Paul and Barnabas were preaching the word of God to the Jews in Antioch, and the audience refused their testimony, the apostle said to them, "Seeing ye thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:46). But though our Lord’s words and deeds were rejected in Capernaum and elsewhere in Galilee and Judea, the Lord did not Himself preach the gospel of the kingdom to Gentiles, nor did He enter Gentile territory. He, however, on this occasion approached the borders of His own country. The branches of the fruitful bough ran over the wall of partition (Genesis 49:22), though the millennial day was, in fact, far distant, when the leaves of the tree of life would be for the healing of the nations everywhere (Revelation 22:3). Nevertheless, those of Tyre and Sidon, who even then cared to seek help and healing from God’s Minister of grace, would not be denied, as the record of the Evangelist proves.

Tyre and Sidon, or Zidon, were cities of great antiquity, the latter being the elder; for Zidon, first-born of Canaan, founded the city, and called it by his own name (Genesis 10:15; Genesis 10:19). Hence, in Matthew the woman of Tyre and Sidon is called a Canaanitess (Matthew 15:22). In the time of Joshua, it had grown to be a place of considerable size and importance, and was known as "great Zidon" (Joshua 11:8; Joshua 19:28). Zidon was included in the inheritance apportioned to the tribe of Asher (Joshua 19:24-31), but the Asherites failed to take full possession of their inheritance. They did not drive out the inhabitants of Zidon, but dwelt among the Canaanites (Judges 1:31-32).

Tyre, twenty miles distant, though the younger city, excelled its neighbour in commercial prosperity and influence, and its worldly grandeur is described in vivid terms by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 27:1-36), and Hiram its king was a useful ally of David and Solomon, and provided workmen and materials for the building of the royal palace and the temple at Jerusalem. But Tyre broke away from the "brotherly covenant," and incurred the divine displeasure (Amos 1:9). Because of their sinful pride God’s judgments came upon these two cities, according to the prophecies of Isaiah (Isaiah 23:1-18) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 26:1-21, Ezekiel 27:1-36, Ezekiel 28:1-26, Ezekiel 29:1-21), by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and subsequently by Alexander the Great of Greece. This punishment came to pass in the words of another prophet: "Tyre did build herself a strong hold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. Behold, the Lord will cast her out, and he will smite her power in the sea, and she shall be devoured with fire" (Zechariah 9:3-4). Their wickedness was so great that they are classed by our Lord with Sodom as monumental examples of the world’s iniquity and departure from God (Matthew 11:22-23). And yet the Lord also declared that if the mighty works done by Him in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes, even as Nineveh did at the preaching of Jonah. The House of Mercy

"And he entered into a house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid." At the dedication of the magnificent temple on Mount Zion, Solomon, contrasting its significance with the infinite and essential glories of Jehovah, exclaimed, "Will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee: how much less this house that I have builded" (2 Kings 8:27). Neither could the house on the borders of Tyre and Sidon contain nor confine the glory of Jehovah’s Servant. "He could not be hid," though in His humility and the lowliness of His heart, He retired from the populous districts bordering the Sea of Galilee, where He was unwanted, and sought some privacy in a house (as Mark alone tells us) near the land of the Gentile.*

{*Compare the words of the prophet, "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour" (Isaiah 45:15).} This voluntary seclusion illustrates to us the amazing perfection of this Servant of God who accepted so meekly the rebuffs to His service. Though arising directly from the men of Israel, the hand of His God was seen by Him to be above all. He bowed to them therefore, as to the will of Him that sent Him. Finding Jerusalem and Galilee leagued against Him, He sought a secret place away from the face of His enemies, where He might spread out the disappointment of His heart of love before the face of His Father. There was a further display of the same spirit later, when the crucifixion became still more imminent, and we read that as the Lord and His disciples "passed through Galilee, he would have no man know it" (Mark 9:30; Mark 9:32). This self-abnegation was of great moral beauty. The act of self-effacement, but most of all the spirit of the act, was rare and choice among men. It was not yet the effulgence of the glorified Son of man shining upon the willing and unwilling, like the lightning from the east unto the west, nevertheless, the glow of this heavenly gem in its earthly setting "could not be hid." It was not yet the appointed time when all flesh should see the glory of Jehovah, but One here and another there, like this Canaanite, discerned and owned in Jesus the Hope of Israel, and the Blesser also of all men.

Lingering still, for a moment, over this phase of moral glory, it will appear to us to be a special feature of Mark’s Gospel to record occasions when our Lord withdrew Himself from men because of their opposition and persecution, and when the very act of retiring before the power of His enemies was accompanied by further witness to His glory from needy suppliants who pursued Him unto His solitude. Thus, when Jesus withdrew from the synagogue of Capernaum to the sea, great multitudes followed Him (Mark 3:6-8). When he crossed the Sea of Galilee to the wilds of Gadara, a man with an unclean spirit met Him for healing and conversion (Mark 7:1-2). When the Lord with His apostles went apart into the desert place after the execution of John the Baptist, great multitudes followed Him (Mark 6:30-33). And in this instance, when Jesus retired to a house after encountering the wilful obduracy and blindness of the guides of Israel, as well as the ignorance of His own disciples, the Syro-phoenician stranger sought Him out, and by her earnest solicitations obtained mercy and found grace to help in time of need. This unnamed house on the borders of Israel became by reason of the Illustrious Presence tarrying there, a tenement of heavenly mercy — a Bethsaida indeed. The house itself, honoured as it was, has passed into oblivion, but the fame of its Heavenly Visitant abides. To this house the woman of Canaan came, lifting up her hands in dim but true faith, not to the temple on Mount Zion where no Shekinah then dwelled, but to the Word of God made flesh and tabernacling among men. In the millennium the house of God "shall be called of all nations the house of prayer." And in these requests made by Gentile strangers direct to Jesus we have individual instances of Jehovah’s comprehensive reply to the petitions of Solomon at the dedication of the temple, when he besought the LORD, saying: "Concerning a stranger that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name’s sake (for they shall hear of thy great name and of thy strong hand, and of thy stretched-out arm), when he shall come and pray towards this house; hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for" (1 Kings 10:41-43). When this "stranger" woman "heard of Him" she, who was forbidden to enter the temple at Jerusalem, came to Jesus as to the true Temple of God upon the earth, and He answered her according to all that she sought of Him. The Mother’s Prayer

It was a mother who sought the presence of Jesus on the borders of the land of Israel. As a parent, she was torn with anxiety and distress for the sufferings of her little daughter, who was "grievously vexed" with a demon. "A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, having heard of him, came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syro-phoenician by race. And she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter."

We cannot but observe in the Gospels what respect the Lord paid to parental concern for their families. In dispensing His blessings, He had special regard for the institutions of family life. Among the comparatively few specific cases of the Lord’s miracles of healing which are recorded, we find that the Lord hearkened to the prayer of
(1) a mother for her daughter (Matthew 15:21-28);
(2) a father for his daughter (Matthew 9:18-26);
(3) a father for his son (Matthew 17:14-18);
(4) a courtier for his son (John 4:46-53);
(5) the mothers for their infants (Luke 18:15-16)
(6) a centurion for his servant (Luke 7:2-10). In the home life the influences of natural affection are mightily powerful upon the young for good or for ill. In the same circle the terrible effects of the presence and operation of sin are perhaps more visible than anywhere else. There, too frequently, alas, cases are found where example and counsel are unavailing to deliver from corrupting and destroying evil. But mothers, fathers, masters, the responsible ones of the household, are encouraged by the cases given in the Gospels to make believing appeals for their charges to Jesus who is able to control and heal the evils of the soul, even as He did the diseases of the body. The woman of Canaan had heard of Jesus; we read that for some while before this date His "fame had spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee" (Mark 1:28), and when the multitudes flocked to Capernaum because "they had heard what great things He did" those about Tyre and Sidon were among them (Mark 3:7-8;Luke 6:17). It was a wealthy queen among the Gentiles who heard of the wisdom of Solomon and came to him with her choice gifts from the ends of the earth that she might see and hear for herself. A greater than Solomon was now lodged in an obscure corner of Galilee, but it was only one of the descendants of Canaan, weighted from the days of Noah with a curse (Genesis 9:25), who came to do homage at His feet and to present her petition. The Psalmist prophesied that when Jehovah’s King came to Zion the daughter of Tyre would be there with a gift (Psalms 45:12), but this poor woman had nothing to bring to Jesus save the fruit of her body, possessed, alas, by an evil demon. Baffled by the power and subtlety of the wicked spirit, she, in her womanly weakness, and in her mother’s love, cried out to Him who had blessed so many of the afflicted daughters of Israel, Lord, help me" (Matthew 15:25). The Children and the Dogs The case of the poor mother was a pathetic one, and would naturally awaken the sympathies of the tender-hearted. But the Great Prophet of the kingdom of God could not be swayed by sentiment or emotion merely, and thrown from His just balance in the administration of the mercy of Jehovah. In Him mercy was perfectly tempered with truth and righteousness, as was the case with none other of the servants of God. Jonah, that former prophet of Galilee, knew neither mercy nor grace, and repined in his bigotry, at the forbearance of God shown to the Ninevites who repented at his preaching. Though he had himself experienced how Jehovah’s power and mercy miraculously delivered a disobedient servant from a just retribution, Jonah could not endure that the ignorant Gentiles unable to "discern between their right hand and their left hand" should be spared from the threatened judgment. But Jesus, while full of compassion for the stranger, was equally full of truth as of grace. His mercy, "the sure mercies of David," was exercised according to the inflexible truth of God. Bounds were set to the flow of the living waters. Jehovah had for many centuries drawn broad and deep distinctions among the families of mankind, based upon His promise and His oath.* In Abraham the olive tree of promise was established, and successive prophets had declared that his seed were the appointed participants in its "root and fatness."

{*At the beginning it was said of Canaan, "a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren" (Genesis 9:25), and many were made bondservants in the land in the days of Solomon (1 Kings 9:20-21).}

According to the oracles of truth, therefore, the seed of Abraham were the chosen people of God, and nationally were brought into filial relationship with Him. "Out of Egypt I have called my son," said Jehovah, carrying the nation out of the house of bondage into the land of plenty, the "land flowing with milk and honey." Because of their gross idolatry and moral depravity, the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan were driven out to make place for those known in prophetic language as "sons of the living God."

Dispensationally, therefore, as the whole scheme of Old Testament promise and prophecy showed, the descendants of Israel were nearer God than the Gentiles. And the Lord Jesus in His ministry of the abundant grace of God recognised the divine restrictions imposed in former days. He had not come to destroy the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17); and what God had established He would not permit man to waive or ignore. Even in this case of dire extremity, the woman was not entitled by reason ofher necessityto set aside the ruling and ways of God for centuries. The Messiah was sent to Israel, and salvation was of the Jews. She must learn that her only hope lay in the sovereign mercy of God. The question involved in the woman’s plea, therefore, was one of proper decorum in approaching the Majesty of heavenly grace. Seemliness in the eyes of heaven is the due recognition of the dignity and authority of what is of God. Distinctions must not be set aside save by the One who made those distinctions. Soon it would be declared of human depravity that "there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"; and further, of divine sovereignty, "there is no difference, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him" (Romans 3:23;Romans 10:12). But in the days of our Lord’s ministry, there were still those who nationally were of the family of God and those who were not. In relative dispensational position, therefore, the two classes were as far removed from one another in the household as children and dogs. Hence the Lord said to the woman, "Let the children first be filled; it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to the dogs." In this reply, the Lord, as it were, appealed to what was in harmony with divine appointment in the matter of government among men. When the order of the coming heavenly kingdom is fully established upon the earth, there will then be a class who have a right to eat of the tree of life, and to enter through the gates into the city: there will at the same time be "dogs," but these are said to be "without" (Revelation 22:15). The words of our Lord challenged the woman whether she would accept these limitations imposed by God in the course of His sovereign dealings with men. The divine decree to Joshua was that the Canaanite should be exterminated from the land, and now the anointed King in that land had used to her a term of reproach which seemed to be harsh and humiliating. What would she do? In her self-abasement, she accepted the term in its full religious import. She could not claim to be a child, and she did not refuse to acknowledge herself before the Lord and His disciples to be an unclean dog. The word of truth had truly entered her soul, and cast out all Gentile pride, convincing her that by race she was an outcast from Israel, and therefore without any prescriptive claim upon the Messiah of that nation. The Woman’s Saying of Faith The woman’s reply to our Lord indicated what was in her heart. She did not dispute His word that the children had a prior claim and should first be filled, nor that it would be unseemly to cast the children’s bread to the dogs. Outward appearances at that time seemed to suggest that the relative position of the two races was the reverse, for the Jew was under the yoke of the Gentile. Nevertheless, the suppliant owned that Israel was the people of God, as Rahab, another Gentile woman, by a similar faith, had done at an earlier day (Hebrews 11:31). But the faith of this stranger went a step farther. She believed the prophet’s word that the seed of Abraham were "children" in the sense ofExodus 4:22;Hosea 1:10;Hosea 11:1; but she also trusted God and His messenger to whom she had come that somehow there would be help for her and her daughter, in spite of her Gentile extraction. From whence did her faith arise? It is written that she had "heard of him;" and "faith cometh by hearing." The news she heard of the Lord brought her to His feet in supplication. Then His word to her, moulding and correcting the terms of her request, further developed the faith of her heart which, like Jacob of old (Genesis 32:26), would not part with Him without His blessing. The Lord described the woman’s faith as great" (Matthew 15:25), and there is but one other instance besides recorded in the Gospels, which He similarly characterised that of the Roman centurion (Matthew 8:10;Luke 7:9). And it is noteworthy that the same Discerner of hearts who pronounced the faith of these two Gentiles to be "great" declared that of the disciples and that of Peter to be "little" (Matthew 8:26;Matthew 14:31).

"Great" faith appears to have grown out of a sense which these two believers had of the illimitable (1) power and (2) grace of Jesus. The two Gentile claimants freely acknowledged their personal unworthiness, but their "great" faith did not consist of their humility. Each presented to the Lord with much fervour a case of great urgency, but their faith did not become great in proportion to the importunity of their petitions. In addition, however, to lowliness of spirit and earnest appeal, they both placed themselves unreservedly in the hands of the Great Benefactor. In other words, they showed unrestricted confidence in His will, acting in His love, to help and heal. Such faith the Lord had not found in Israel, for they said to Him, "What doest thou for a sign that we may see and believe thee?" (John 6:30)!

There appear at the same time to be differences between the cases. The centurion trusted the power of Jesus, especially in His capacity as the administrator of the Kingdom of God. He did not at all expect the Lord to come beneath the roof of a Gentile; indeed he did not consider that His bodily presence was essential. The Master needed only, as he said, to utter the word of command, and his servant would be healed (cp.Psalms 107:20). These expressions of the Roman officer showed his absolute confidence in the supreme power wielded by the Nazarene; and the Lord recognized this when He said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." In the second instance, the woman of Canaan expressed her confidence, not so much in the fulness of the authority as in the over-flowing goodness and bounty of Jesus. The Master who had prepared a table for the children of the kingdom did so, she believed, with a lavishness worthy of the God of heaven. The Messiah had come to fill the hungry with good things. At His feast there was ample provision for all. And while it was not meet that bread should be withdrawn from the children and thrown to the dogs, there were fragments from the feast that remained, crumbs that fell from the table loaded with the Master’s benefits, portions of the plenty unneeded, neglected, despised by the rightful guests. Of these fragments, the dogs of the household under the table might surely, she pleaded, be permitted to eat with freedom, though indeed Lazarus desired in vain those that fell from the table of Dives (Luke 16:21). As a Gentile stranger, she could not claim a chief seat at the feast, nor indeed could she claim a seat as guest at all. Nor, to anticipate the apostolic figure, had she, as of the wild olive, any desire to "boast herself against the branches" (Romans 11:18), but in singular and appropriate humility she abased herself to a dog’s place beneath the table that there she might be authorised by the Master to partake of the crumbs of heavenly mercy. Thus, humbling herself to the lowest, but clinging ever to the All-highest, she became to the Lord’s eyes "great in faith," giving glory to God. Her Perseverance in Prayer The pertinacity of the woman in presenting her requests is marked in the narratives of both Matthew and Mark, and she affords a striking example of that continuance in prayer to which the apostle of the Gentiles exhorts the church at Colosse (Colossians 4:2). The persevering suit of the woman was based, as indeed all real believing prayer must be, upon a sense of the love and grace of God revealed in His Son. This active cause is brought out in the following quotation (slightly abridged).

"Need and faith in the goodness and power of the Lord give perseverance, as in the case of those who carried the paralytic man when the crowd pressed around Jesus (Mark 2:3-5). But there is something in the woman’s heart beside confidence, which grace had produced there. She recognises the rights of the Jews as God’s people; she owns that she is but a dog with regard to them: but she insists upon her demand, because she feels that, even though she be but a dog, the grace of God is sufficient for those who had no rights. ’Even the dogs,’ she says, ’eat of the children’s crumbs.’

"She believes in God’s love towards those who have neither rights nor promises; and in the manifestation of God in Jesus outside of, and above, all dispensations. God is good, and the fact of a person being in misery is a claim with Him. Could Christ say to her, ’No, God is not good as thou dost suppose’? He could not say this: it would not have been the truth.

"This is great faith, faith which recognises our own wretchedness, and that we have a right to nothing, but which believes in the love of God clearly revealed in Jesus. We have no right to expect the exercise of this love towards us, but we can be sure that coming to Christ, impelled by our wants, we shall find perfect goodness, love that heals us, and the healing itself.

"Let us remember that true need perseveres because it cannot do without the aid of the power which was manifested in Christ, nor without the salvation which He brought; nor is there salvation without the help which is to be found in Him for our weakness. And that which is in God is the source of our hope and of our faith; and if asked how we know what is in God’s heart, we can answer, It is perfectly revealed in Christ.’ Who put it into God’s heart to send His own Son to save us? Who put it into the Son’s heart to come and suffer everything for us? Not man. God’s heart is its source. We believe in this love.

"The grace of God was fully shown forth towards the poor woman, who had no right to any blessing, nor to any promise; she was a daughter of the accursed Canaan; but faith reaches even to the heart of God manifested in Jesus, and in like manner the eye of God reaches to the bottom of man’s heart. Thus God’s heart and man’s heart meet, in the consciousness that man is altogether bad, that he has not a single right; indeed he owns truly this state, and gives himself up to the perfect goodness of God. But the Jewish people, who pretended to possess righteousness and right to the promises is set on one side; and, as to the old covenant, is shut out from God’s favour."* {*Collected Writings of J. N. D., vol. 24, pp. 398-400.} Features Peculiar to Matthew A comparison of the terms in which this incident is recounted by Matthew and Mark respectively, affords illustration of the distinct purposes of the two Evangelists in their histories.

Mark, who presents Jesus as the Great Servant-Prophet of Jehovah, executing earthly commission with unexampled perfection and grace of manner, shows Him in the outskirts of Immanuel’s land, feeding the Syro-phoenician woman with the "bread of heaven." Mark’s account is briefer than the companion one, but sufficient to excite our adoring wonder at the readiness of the Lord to take up His active service even when the Gentile stranger sought His presence in the house where He "would have no man know it." This prophet’s kindness to the woman who came out of the borders of Tyre and Sidon recalls the mission of Elijah to the widow of Zarephath, a city of Zidon. In the days of famine she was preserved from starvation by the power and mercy of Jehovah through the prophet, though she was a Gentile and not a widow in Israel (1 Kings 17:8-16;Luke 4:26). The principal points which appear only in the account by Matthew, and which illustrate His regal demeanour, are as follows:
(1) The woman addressed the Lord as Son of David.
(2) The Lord remained silent at first.
(3) The disciples in the Jewish spirit of exclusiveness desired that she might be sent away.
(4) The Lord made reference to His mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
(5) The Lord commended the greatness of the woman’s faith. The first Gospel presents Jesus especially as of the Royal House of David, and its first verse reads: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." As the Old Testament records those who confessed the fugitive David to be the anointed king of Israel (2 Samuel 23:1-39,et alia),so Matthew most fully of the four Evangelists records those who owned Jesus of Nazareth to be the Son of David. There are six such instances: —
(1) two blind men in Galilee (Matthew 9:27);
(2) the multitude in Galilee (Matthew 12:23);
(3) the woman of Canaan (Matthew 15:22);
(4) two blind men near Jericho (Matthew 20:30-31);
(5) the multitude at the entrance to Jerusalem (Matthew 21:9);
(6) the children in the temple (Matthew 21:15). But the Pharisees will not own Him either as David’s Son or David’s Lord (Matthew 22:41-46). There are three Gentile women named in the genealogy of the Royal Child, viz., Tamar, Rahab and Ruth (Matthew 1:3-5), and one other is honourably mentioned, though not by name (Matthew 15:22), among the few who hailed the Nazarene as the Son of David.*

{*Study the contrast with others of her country, who sought the goodwill of that Edomite tyrant who in his arrogancy was blasted by the open judgment of God (Acts 12:20-23).}

Though the Lord remained silent, was not this confession sweet to Him, though coming from the mouth of a Gentile? He was in the territory of the tribe of Asher, of whom Jacob prophesied, "He shall yield royal dainties" (Genesis 49:20). So although there was no table in Zion for David’s Son, there was one spread in the wilderness of Asher, where He had royal dainties to eat that Israel knew not of, and where there were crumbs of grace for hungry Gentiles too.