Dog

The dog runs through scripture as a despised animal, never a companion. It guards a flock at a distance, scavenges along city walls and battlefields, licks blood from the dust, and gives its name to whatever the speaker wants pushed outside the gate. The figurative uses are wide — self-abasement, contempt for an enemy, the disqualified shepherd, the disqualified worker, the temple-prostitute banned from the sanctuary, the unclean class shut out of the holy city — but the underlying picture stays the same: an animal one tolerates near the camp without ever bringing inside.

Dog as Scavenger and Threat

The dog meets Israel first as the eater of what is left. Mosaic law sends torn flesh out to it: "And you⁺ will be holy men to me: therefore you⁺ will not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; you⁺ will cast it to the dogs" (Ex 22:31). At the Passover, the dog stands as the measure of the distinction Yahweh draws between Egypt and Israel: "But against any of the sons of Israel will not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast: that you⁺ may know how that Yahweh does make a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel" (Ex 11:7).

In the courtyards of Saul and David, the dog moves at the city wall after dark. The persecuted singer of Psalm 59 hears the same circuit twice: "They return at evening, they howl like a dog, And go round about the city" (Ps 59:6); and again, "And at evening let them return, let them howl like a dog, And go round about the city" (Ps 59:14). Psalm 22 uses the same picture for the company hemming the sufferer in: "For dogs have surrounded me: A company of evildoers have enclosed me" (Ps 22:16); the prayer for rescue uses the dog as the standing image of the predator: "Deliver my soul from the sword, My darling from the power of the dog" (Ps 22:20). Psalm 68 brings the dog onto the battlefield as eater of the slain: "That you may crush [them, dipping] your foot in blood, That the tongue of your dogs may have its portion from [your] enemies" (Ps 68:23).

The prophets use the same scene as a sentence. Jeremiah names the dogs as the second of four agents of judgment Yahweh appoints: "And I will appoint over them four kinds, says Yahweh: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the birds of the heavens, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and to destroy" (Jer 15:3). The pattern is fixed: city dead go to the dogs, field dead go to the birds. The threat is repeated against every dynasty Israel breaks with. Of Jeroboam: "He of Jeroboam who dies in the city, the dogs will eat; and he who dies in the field, the birds of the heavens will eat: for [the Speech of] Yahweh has spoken it" (1Ki 14:11). Of Baasha: "He who dies of Baasha in the city, the dogs will eat; and he who dies of his in the field, the birds of the heavens will eat" (1Ki 16:4, by the same pattern). Of Ahab: "He who dies of Ahab in the city, the dogs will eat; and he who dies in the field, the birds of the heavens will eat" (1Ki 21:24).

Licking Blood: Naboth, Ahab, and Jezebel

The Naboth narrative attaches the dog to a precise place. Yahweh's word through Elijah binds Ahab's death-place to Naboth's: "Thus says Yahweh, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth will dogs lick your blood, even yours" (1Ki 21:19). The fulfillment is reported with the same vocabulary: "And they washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood (now the whores washed themselves [there]); according to the word of Yahweh which he spoke" (1Ki 22:38). Jezebel falls under a parallel oracle: "And of Jezebel, Yahweh also spoke, saying, The dogs will eat Jezebel by the rampart of Jezreel" (1Ki 21:23). Jehu repeats the word as he goes out to do it — "And the dogs will eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there will be none to bury her" (2Ki 9:10) — and the chronicler closes the sequence by tying the deed back to the prophet who first spoke it: "This is the word of Yahweh, which he spoke by his slave Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel will the dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel" (2Ki 9:36).

Self-Abasement and Contempt

The dog supplies the standard idiom for the speaker who wants to make himself nothing or for the speaker who wants the other party to be nothing. Goliath opens the duel by treating David's staff as fit for an animal: "Am I a dog, that you come to me with staves?" (1Sa 17:43). David, hidden in the cave, uses the same vocabulary against himself before Saul: "After whom has the king of Israel come out? After whom do you pursue? After a dead dog, after a flea" (1Sa 24:14). Mephibosheth pushes the same idiom to its end after David's kindness: "What is your slave, that you should look at such a dead dog as I am?" (2Sa 9:8). Abishai uses it of Shimei when Shimei curses David: "Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over, I pray you, and take off his head" (2Sa 16:9). Abner spits it at Ishbosheth: "Am I a dog's head that belongs to Judah?" (2Sa 3:8). Hazael answers Elisha with the same self-deprecating form on the way to the Damascus throne: "But what is your slave, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?" (2Ki 8:13). The idiom lives long enough to be doubled in Ben Sira — there a forced peace between hyena and dog stands as the index of impossibility: "From a man there can be peace between a hyena and a dog. From where can there be peace between the rich and the poor?" (Sir 13:18).

The Dog Among the Flock

The dog's only honored role is at the edge of the flock, never inside it. Job, recalling his former honor, measures the worthlessness of those who now mock him by naming the lowest grade of household labor: "But now those who are younger than I have me in derision, Whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs of my flock" (Job 30:1). The dog is also the picture of the worker who has been given the office of the watchman and refuses the work. Isaiah indicts Israel's leaders by naming the watchdogs that won't bark: "His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they can't bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber. Yes, the dogs are greedy of soul, they can never have enough; and these are shepherds who cannot understand: they have all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, from every quarter" (Isa 56:10-11). The dog inside the flock is the dog that fails the flock.

The lapping habit even becomes the test that picks the army. At the spring of Harod, Yahweh keeps the three hundred by an animal mannerism: "Everyone who laps of the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, him you will set by himself; likewise everyone who bows down on his knees to drink" (Judges 7:5).

Habits That Become Proverbs

The dog supplies two of scripture's plainest proverbs about character. The first is the return to the vomit: "As a dog that returns to his vomit, [So is] a fool that repeats his folly" (Pr 26:11). The proverb lives long enough to be cited in the New Testament against false teachers who repent and unrepent: "It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turning to his own vomit again, and the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire" (2Pe 2:22). The second is the dog by the ears: "He who passes by, [and] is furious with strife not belonging to him, Is [like] one who takes a dog by the ears" (Pr 26:17). Ecclesiastes adds the proverb that the lowest living animal beats the noblest dead one: "For to him who is joined with all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion" (Eccl 9:4).

The dog also walks in a list with the strutting goat and the unopposed king as one of the four "stately in march": "The greyhound; the he-goat also; And the king against whom there is no rising up" (Pr 30:31).

The Dog and the Sanctuary

Deuteronomy 23 names the dog at the door of the sanctuary as a banned offering. The verse pairs the wages of a whore with the price of a kelev and forbids both as gifts for any vow: "You will not bring the wages of a whore, or the price of a sissy, into the house of Yahweh your God for any vow: for both of them alike are disgusting to Yahweh your God" (De 23:18). The UPDV note at the verse is explicit that "sissy" renders the term whose literal sense is "dog," and ties the verse to its New Testament echo at Re 22:15. Isaiah uses the same animal at the same threshold, this time as the figure for an offering that mocks the offerer: "He who kills an ox is as he who slays a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, as he who breaks a dog's neck; he who offers an oblation, [as he who offers] swine's blood" (Isa 66:3). Ox/man, lamb/dog, oblation/swine's blood, frankincense/idol — the dog stands in the second pair as the animal whose carcass cannot pass the altar.

Dog at the Table and Dog at the Door

The Gospels keep the figure. In the Syrophoenician encounter, Jesus opens with the proverb of the children's bread, "Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs," and the woman receives the figure and turns it: "Lord, even the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs" (Mark 7:27-28). The same scavenging dog meets the beggar at the gate of the rich man's house. Lazarus lies "at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the [crumbs] that fell from the rich man's table; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores" (Luke 16:20-21). The dogs do for the beggar what the rich man does not.

Figurative Uses: Workers and the Excluded

The figure carries straight into the apostolic letters. Paul's warning to the Philippians takes the dog-label off the unclean animal and puts it on the human opponent: "Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision" (Php 3:2). The tripled imperative places the dog-label first in a three-fold class-name for an adversary group, paired with "evil workers" and "the concision."

The Apocalypse closes the canonical use of the figure at the door of the holy city. The vice-roster reads: "Outside are the sissies, and the sorcerers, and the whores, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and makes a lie" (Re 22:15). The UPDV note records that "sissies" again renders the term whose literal sense is "dogs," and the cross-reference points back to De 23:18. The dog of the law's banned offering becomes the dog of the city's banned company. In both texts the dog is the animal that does not come in.

Related

Shepherd — the watchdog at the edge of the flock and the shepherds who fail to bark belong to the same scene that Isa 56 brings under one judgment.