Dog

Dogs appear in 40 different verses in the Bible, translating the Hebrew word keleb and the Greek kusin.

Unlike our modern (over?)affection for dogs—with some eating far better than the majority of children in the other two thirds world—dogs do not get that kind of thoughts in the Bible. In only one instance does it appear in a helpful context: as sheep-dogs (Job 30:1), and twice more when they do not appear as instilling terror: when "not a dog will bark at any man or animal" on the night when the Yahweh would go among the Egyptians to take every firstborn, so that Israel may "know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel" (Exo 11:7; this is also the first time the animal appears in the Bible).

On the whole they are seen as feral, vicious, worthless. While we moderns think of the dog as the most faithful of all animals, the many times the dog appears in metaphorical contexts in the Bible suggest that they are treacherous creatures. "Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet" (Psm 22:16). "Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs" (Psm 22:20). "They [traitors] return at evening, snarling like dogs, and prowl about the city" (Psm 59:6]. Comparing Israel's watchmen to dogs, Isaiah says "they are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, each seeks his own gain" (Isa 56:11). When Ish-Bosheth questioned Abner about the latter sleeping with his father's concubine, Abner angrily asked Ish-Bosheth, "Am I a dog's head on Judah's side?" (2 Sam 3:8). Most famously, only the dog "returns to its vomit [as] a fool repeats his folly" (Prov 26:11; 2 Pet 2:21). If the view of the OT about dogs is not embracing, neither does the NT view the animal any better, though it appears far less frequently (9x out of 41x). Of these it appears 4x in the story of the conversation between Jesus and the Canaanite woman who came to seek his help with her demon-possessed daughter (Matt 15:21-28; Mk 7:24-29). Elsewhere dogs are equated with swine to which we should not give what is sacred (or pearls) (Matt 7:6). Paul urges the Philippian Christians to "watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh" (3:2). John, similarly, speaks of those who have no access to the tree of life as "dogs, those mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, each seeks his own gain" (Rev 22:15).

It is interesting to note that 1) the narrative of Ahab and Jezebel's death, with the dogs licking their blood, uses up more occurences of the noun than any other, 2) the expression 'a dead dog,' implying a useless, insignificant person occurs more often than any other, followed by "dogs will eat those belonging to A who die in the city and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country" which is applied to Jeroboam (1 Ki 14: 11), Baasha (1 Ki 16:4) and Ahab (1 Ki 21:24). (Cat lovers may wish to know that cats are not mentioned in the Bible.)