In this miracle of healing it is made clear that Jesus' first responsibility was to the Jews, those whom God had first called to be his people, but when the Phoenician woman shows that her faith in the power of Jesus is genuine, by her very clever answer, he heals her daughter by the power of his word. Mark intends his readers to see that this woman was one of those whom the Jews considered to be outside God's mercy; the incident was a significant foreshadowing of the imminent spread of the Good News to the Gentile world.