And behold a woman of Canaan
That is, of Phoenicia, which was called Canaan; so Shaul, the son of a Canaanitish woman, is, by the Septuagint in ( Exodus 6:15 ) called the son of a Phoenician; and the kings of Canaan are, by the same interpreters in ( Joshua 5:1 ) called kings of Phoenicia: hence this woman is by Mark said to be a Greek, that is, a Gentile, as the Jews used to call all of another nation, and a Syrophenician, being a native of Phoenicia, called Syrophenician; because it bordered upon Syria, and had been formerly a part of it, by conquest: so Cadmus, who is reported to have first brought letters from Phoenicia to Greece, is called F9 a Syrophenician merchant.
Came out of the same coasts;
being an inhabitant, it is very likely, either of Tyre or Sidon: this shows that Christ did not go into these places, but only to the borders of them, since she is said to come out of them to him; who, having heard of him, and the miraculous cures wrought by him, and being informed that he was near, at such a place, as the Persic version says, "suddenly came forth out of a corner"; and the Ethiopic reads it, "out of the mountains thereof"; and made to the house where he was privately retired, and would have hid himself, as Mark suggests,
and cried unto him;
with a loud voice, with much vehemency, being in great distress,
saying, have mercy on me;
meaning, by curing her daughter, with whose case she was so much affected, that she made it, as it were, her own:
O Lord, thou son of David.
The first of these characters expresses her faith in his power, dominion, and government, that all persons and things, and so all diseases were at his command, and control; and that being Lord of all, he could remove them at his pleasure: the other shows her knowledge and belief of him, as the Messiah, that being a name by which he was usually known by the Jews; (See Gill on Matthew 1:1) and which she, though a Gentile, might come at the knowledge of, either through being a proselyte to the Jewish religion, or through a general report which might reach, especially the neighbouring nations, that the Jews expected a wonderful deliverer to arise among them, under this character of the son of David; and from what she had heard of him, she concluded he must be the person.
My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil,
which had took possession of her, and most grievously afflicted her: and her request to him was, that he would cast him out of her: believing he had power so to do, without seeing or touching her, only by a word speaking: her faith was like that of the centurion's.