Told by DaisyToday I’m telling you what the Bible says about us dogs. Don’t worry, it gets really beautiful at the end.
The first time I looked up what the Bible says about us dogs, I was honestly a little hurt. Dogs appear around 40 times in the Bible, and it is almost never meant kindly. But if you look closer, you find something you don’t expect between those verses: stories of people who thought of themselves as dogs, and of a God who brings them to his table anyway.
Why dogs have a bad reputation in the Bible
The dogs of the ancient Near East had no basket and no collar like mine. Most of them lived in packs on the edge of towns, ate scraps and were considered unclean. That’s why “dog” is often an insult in the Bible. Goliath is outraged and asks David whether he takes him for a dog, because David comes at him with sticks ✦1 Samuel 17:43✦. And the book of Proverbs says, not very flatteringly, that a fool who repeats his folly is like a dog returning to its vomit ✦Proverbs 26:11✦. Fenny says that’s just a rumor. I’d rather not comment.
The most striking one is Psalm 22, a psalm of David. It describes a man surrounded by his enemies:
For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet.
Jesus prayed this psalm on the cross. Its first words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, are in ✦Matthew 27:46✦.
Dogs that work
Still, the Bible isn’t completely without good dogs. Job mentions “my sheep dogs” ✦Job 30:1✦, herding dogs that went out with the flock. By the way, lots of people call me a sheep in winter, but that’s another story. In the book of Tobit, which is in Catholic Bibles and counted among the Apocrypha in Protestant ones, a dog even goes along with young Tobias and the angel Raphael on their whole journey. It’s the only dog in the Bible that is simply there because it belongs.
Archaeology shows that dogs were also valued in the region. In Ashkelon, a Phoenician port city on the coast of Israel, Harvard University excavators found the graves of more than 1,300 dogs from the 5th and early 4th centuries before Christ. Each dog lay in its own pit, on its side, its tail carefully tucked against its hind legs. It is the largest dog cemetery known from the ancient world. These dogs mattered to someone.
“A living dog is better than a dead lion”
My favorite sentence about dogs is in the book of Ecclesiastes:
For to him who is joined with all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
Here the dog is the lowliest thing you can imagine, and the lion the most magnificent. And still the dog wins, because it is alive. I’m a very small dog, and this sentence gives me courage every time. As long as you’re alive, your story isn’t over, however small you feel.
“A dead dog such as I am”
Mephibosheth was the grandson of King Saul and the son of David’s best friend Jonathan. As a child he was dropped while his family fled, and from then on he was “lame in both his feet” ✦2 Samuel 9:13✦. After his father and grandfather died, he lived far from the court in Lo Debar. As the grandson of the old king, he had every reason to fear the worst from the new one. Then David sent for him. Mephibosheth fell on his face before him. But David said to him, “Don’t be afraid”, gave him back all of his grandfather’s land and said he would eat at his table continually ✦2 Samuel 9:7✦. Mephibosheth answered:
What is your servant, that you should look on such a dead dog as I am?
That’s how he saw himself: worthless, a dead dog. That’s not how the king saw him. The chapter ends with Mephibosheth eating at the king’s table every day.
The woman Jesus did not send away
Now comes my favorite story. It’s in ✦Matthew 15:21-28✦ and also in ✦Mark 7:24-30✦. A woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon comes to Jesus. She isn’t Jewish, she doesn’t belong, and her daughter is very ill. She cries out after him. The disciples want to get rid of her: “Send her away; for she cries after us” ✦Matthew 15:23✦. But she kneels before Jesus and says only: “Lord, help me.”
Jesus answers with a picture that sounds harsh at first:
It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.
The Greek text doesn’t use the usual word for dog here, but kynarion, a diminutive. It means the little dogs that live in the house and wait under the table for something to drop. So, dogs like me. The word appears in the whole New Testament only in this one story. Many scholars see it as an invitation to keep talking, and that is exactly what the woman does. She takes up the picture and holds on to it:
Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
I know exactly what it’s like to sit under the table hoping for a crumb. The disciples wanted to send her away. Jesus doesn’t. He says: “Woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you even as you desire”, and her daughter is healed from that hour ✦Matthew 15:28✦.
What this has to do with you
Almost every one of these stories is about someone who felt small, left out or worthless: a dog under the table, a dead dog on the floor before the king. And every time, it ends at the table. Jesus put it like this:
He who comes to me I will in no way throw out.
That’s why we’re called The Bible Dogs. Fenny and I pass exactly this on every day: nobody is too small, nobody doesn’t belong, and nobody gets sent away. You neither.
Bible quotations: World English Bible (public domain). Sources: Bible Hub, Strong’s 2952 (kynarion); Lawrence E. Stager, “Why Were Hundreds of Dogs Buried at Ashkelon?”, Biblical Archaeology Review 17:3 (1991); Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon (excavations 1986 to 1994).
