Two Greek words (related to each other) are translated “dogs” eight times in the New Testament. Five of those
times it refers to literal dogs (Matt, 15:26-27; Mark 7:27-28; Luke 16:21), although the “dogs” in the first four verses
symbolize Gentiles. The first time and the last two times, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are referring to two-legged dog
breeds—in other words, men. Strong defines the Hebrew word as a dog (the animal) in his first definition; for the second one,
he says that metaphorically it stands for a “man of impure mind, an impudent man.”
These are not obscure passages; the first involves Jesus giving this advice in Matthew 7:6: “Do not give what is
holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine….” This is a parallelism, in which both parts are making the same
point—one very similar to what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:14: “But the natural man does not receive the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.” These
dogs and swine have a very small spiritual appetite; they make no effort to understand anything that is not of a material
nature. They understand motivations such as money, power, and sex, but probably have no use for sacrificial love.
What is the point of sharing spiritual gems with those incapable of comprehending their value
Paul likewise sounds a conspicuous warning in Philippians 3:2: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation!”
The apostle refers to the Judaizing teachers that have a one-track mind—making certain that all
Gentiles have been circumcised in the flesh. Never mind their spiritual development in Jesus or their evangelistic zeal
to convert others—have they been circumcised? Weeping about the matter, Paul declares these men “enemies of the
cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). Of all the spiritual riches to discover in Jesus, they can only “set their minds on earthly
things” (v. 19). Their obsession with the flesh meant a wrongful interest on their own account, which stifled their own
growth and led to them spreading a false doctrine.
The last reference to human “dogs” appears in Revelation 22:15. God prohibits these, along with other morally
deficient individuals, from entering into the gates of the heavenly city. Homer Hailey wrote that these dogs “describe
the immoral, the prostitutes, and sodomites (homosexuals, Deut. 23:17f), the vicious (Ps. 22:16; Phil. 3:2)…and those
who wallow in filth (II Peter 2:22)” (Revelation: An Introduction and Commentary 430, ellipsis GWS). If no other incentive
encouraged us to want to be safely inside the heavenly city (reasons, however, abound), the dogs waiting to devour
victims on the outside would be motivation enough.