Our Lord was, therefore, already well-known in Phoenicia at the time when an event occurred which caused him to take refuge in that area.  The event was the murder of St John the Baptist by King Herod Antipas; and Jesus, in order that his own ministry might not be prematurely ended, withdrew secretly to the district round Tyre and Sidon.

But so prominent a personality could not go unrecognised for long and he was soon discovered by a Phoenician woman in great distress.  His arrival must have seemed to her a godsend because her daughter was, in her own words “tormented by a demon” (NRSV, Matthew 15:22), and she knew that he was the only one who was able to cure her.  Any doubt as to his willingness to do so never entered her mind.  He had never yet been known to refuse to heal anyone, and even though he was in non-Jewish territory, there was an excellent precedent.

Did not the great Elijah himself, when he was in hiding from King Ahab, heal the widow’s son at Sarepta between Tyre and Sidon?  So surely there could be no question of Jesus not doing the same for her, even if he happened to be in hiding from King Herod Antipas.