Daily Devotional

This is the hinge of the whole verse, and it is the part most easily abused. A critical spirit loves the words dogs and pigs. But understand the picture first. In Jesus’s day dogs were not pets. They were wild scavengers, the garbage collectors of the street, more like wolves than the animals at our feet today. The pigs were not barnyard animals but wild boars, and anyone in Florida who has watched a boar tear up a field knows the danger.

Here is the key. The dogs and pigs are not all unbelievers. They are not the lost person who has never heard, not the honest skeptic with real questions, not the coworker who is far from God but still listening. They are the small, specific group who have heard the gospel, understood it, and turned on it with vicious scorn and hardened contempt. The dog is the one who should know better and answers the truth with mockery.

The church has been slapping this label on the wrong people for thousands of years, writing off whole nations and classes as beyond the gospel. So hear what is not being said. This verse is not a permission slip to give up on people. It describes the rare, settled, scornful case, and even Matthew 10:14 shows it used sparingly, only with those who had every reason to believe and still turned away.