Bible Strands
Matthew 15:24
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Jesus speaks to the Canaan woman who has been crying out after Him; the disciples have just urged Him to send her away.
The words — οὐκ… εἰ μὴ (ouk… ei mē) is a negative-restriction construction: "not… except," narrowing the scope of the commission to one group.
The thread — The same restriction appears in Matthew 10:5 (the twelve's commission) and is echoed in Romans 15:8, where Paul frames Christ's work among the circumcised as a means to confirm the promises to the fathers. The "lost sheep" language draws on Jeremiah 50:6.
Why it lands — The statement is immediately overridden two verses later when Jesus commends the woman's faith, so the verse functions as a threshold rather than a verdict. It asks the reader to sit with a stated limit that the text itself dismantles.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Cross-references
- Matthew 10:5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go onto the road of the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.
- Romans 15:8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs,
- Jeremiah 50:6 My people are lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray, causing them to roam the mountains. They have wandered from mountain to hill; they have forgotten their resting place.
- Acts 13:46 Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: “It was necessary to speak the word of God to you first. But since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.
- Ezekiel 34:5 They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild beasts.
- Acts 3:25 And you are sons of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers when He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed.’
- Ezekiel 34:16 I will seek the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the broken, and strengthen the weak; but the sleek and strong I will destroy. I will shepherd them with justice.’
- Isaiah 53:6 We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.
- Ezekiel 34:23 I will appoint over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them. He will feed them and be their shepherd.
- Luke 15:4 “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the pasture and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?