Philippians 3:2

Beware of dogs,.... By whom are meant the "judaizing" teachers, who were for imposing the works and ceremonies of the law upon the Gentiles, as necessary to salvation; and they have the name retorted

Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. Beware , [ blepete (G991)] - 'Have your eye on' so as to beware of. Contrast "mark," namely, so as to follow (Philippians 3:17).

Beware; he cautions all, both officers and people: and though the original word doth signify to look with mind and eye, yet it is also frequently rendered, to take heed, 12:38 8:9,23,33 . Of dogs; of those dogs, (with the article emphatically proposed), a metaphor borrowed from those voracious, fierce, impure animals, whose price was not brought into the Lord’ s house, ; to connote the false apostles, who endeavoured to corrupt the gospel with Judaism and profaneness, even antichristianism; compare ,20 Matthew 7:6 15:26 . Some think the apostle may allude unto the proverbial speech: Take heed of a mad dog, forasmuch as false teachers, being acted as with a certain madness, would bite Christ and his apostles, and tear his body; and these mad dogs were the more dangerous, in that they did not bark so much as bite. Hence they say, Take heed of a dumb dog and still watcher. There were of several sorts, enemies to the cross of Christ, ,15; some more secret, as Absalom against Amnon, , pretending contrary to their practice, 13:22. Our Saviour bade his disciples beware of such, , which he found to be of this temper, ,20 55:15; though some of them were but dumb dogs, : some such there were amongst the Philipplans, who, notwithstanding their fair pretext, were enemies to the cross of Christ, did secretly disparage his true apostle, and tear his flock: see , with ,16. Beware of evil workers; such as pretended to labour in promoting the gospel of Christ, but secretly were doing mischief amongst Christians, not serving the glory of Christ but their own bellies, ,19; being, as he elsewhere calls them, deceitful workers, , glorying in the flesh, . Beware of the concision; by an elegant allusion to the name circumcision, which rite the Jews did glory in, and some false teachers of Christianity, after the time of reformation, did urge as necessary to salvation, and require it from others, ,4 Galatians 6:12. These Paul here, in a holy sarcasm, charges the Philippians to take heed of, under the contemptible name of the concision, or cutting off, intimating that the exterior part of that typical work, which was done in the cutting off the foreskin, was now, from the coming of Christ, altogether made a mere cutting off the skin, condemned by God in the heathens, as a profane incision, 21:5, where the LXX. use the same preposition in the compound word, the apostle here doth in contempt of the thing; which could now bring nothing of profit, nothing of holiness, nothing of honour to any Christian, could no more avail or advantage a man now, than if it were conferred on a beast, being no seal of the covenant now, but a stickling for that rite (when abolished by Christ) which was a mere rending of the church, and in that effect a cutting off from it, ,12.

2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. Ver. 2. Beware of dogs] That is, seducers and sectarians, who though dead dogs, yet will be barking at godly ministers. And though the dogs of Egypt would not move their tongues against Israel, Exodus 11:7, yet these greedy dogs, Isaiah 56:11, can both bark and bite better men than themselves, being set on by the devil. Homines perfrictae frontis, impudent as dogs. Ravenous also when they get among the flocks, Ezekiel 22:25. Farther, they are crouching, colloguing creatures, 2 Timothy 3:4 : but believe them not; receive them not; for like dirty dogs they will but bemire you with fawning; yea, like cur-dogs, they will suck your blood with licking, and in the end kill you, and cut your throats without biting. Beware of them, therefore, beware, saith the apostle here. Beware of evil workers] Deceitful workers, 2 Corinthians 11:13, that seem to build staircases for heaven, when indeed they dig descents down to hell, taking great pains to very evil purpose. Beware of the concision] For circumcision; as Diogenes called Zeno’ s διατριβηνκατατριβην and Euclid’ s αχοληνχολην. (Laert.) The Holy Scriptures have many such elegant and pleasant passages, as Proverbs 25:27; Hosea 4:15; Galatians 5:12; Isaiah 5:7, &c. There is one that senseth it thus, Beware of the concision, that is, of those that make divisions and out the Church into little pieces, and sacking congregations, making separation. So Piscator, Qui conantur vos ab ecclesia Dei rescindere, who seek to sunder you from the Church. The Donatists affirmed that there were no true Churches but theirs, and were also divided among themselves, in minutula frustula, into small factions, as Austin saith.

(2) Beware of (the) dogs.—In Revelation 22:15 “the dogs” excluded from the heavenly Jerusalem seem to be those who are impure. In that sense the Jews applied the word to the heathen, as our Lord, for a moment appearing to follow the Jewish usage, does to the Syro-Phœnician woman in Matthew 15:26. But here the context appropriates the word to the Judaising party, who claimed special purity, ceremonial and moral, and who probably were not characterised by peculiar impurity—such as, indeed, below (Philippians 3:17-21) would seem rather to attach to the Antinomian party, probably the extreme on the other side. Chrysostom’s hint that the Apostle means to retort the name upon them, as now by their own wilful apostasy occupying the place outside the spiritual Israel which once belonged to the despised Gentiles, is probably right. Yet perhaps there may be some allusion to the dogs, not as unclean, but as, especially in their half-wild state in the East, snarling and savage, driving off as interlopers all who approach what they consider their ground. Nothing could better describe the narrow Judaising spirit. Of evil workers.—Comp. 2 Corinthians 11:13, describing the Judaisers as “deceitful workers.” Here the idea is of their energy in work, but work for evil. The concision.—By an ironical play upon words St. Paul declares his refusal to call the circumcision, on which the Judaisers prided themselves, by that time-honoured name; for “we,” he says, “are the true circumcision,” the true Israel of the new covenant. In Ephesians 2:11 (where see Note) he had denoted it as the “so-called circumcision in the flesh made by hands.” Here he speaks more strongly, and calls it a “concision,” a mere outward mutilation, no longer, as it had been, a “seal” of the covenant (Romans 4:11). There is a still more startling attack on the advocates of circumcision in Galatians 5:12 (where see Note).

Verse 2. Beware of dogs] The Jews, who have here the same appellative which they formerly gave to the Gentiles: because the Gentiles were not included in the covenant, they called them DOGS; and themselves, the children of the Most High. Now, they are cast out of the covenant and the Gentiles taken in; therefore they are the dogs, and the Gentiles the children. Evil workers] Judaizing teachers, who endeavoured to pervert the Gospel. The concision.] κατατομην. The cutting or excision; not περιτομην, the circumcision: the word is used by the apostle to degrade the pretensions which the Jews made to sanctity by the cutting in their flesh. Circumcision was an honourable thing, for it was a sign of the covenant; but as they now had rejected the new covenant, their circumcision was rendered uncircumcision, and is termed a cutting, by way of degradation.

2. Beware of] Lit., “see.” For this use of the verb, cp. Colossians 4:17; 2 John 1:8.dogs] Lit. and better, the dogs. He refers to a known and defined class; and these evidently were those Judaistic teachers within the pale of the Church to whom he has referred already (Philippians 1:15) in another connexion and in a different tone. These Pharisee-Christians very probably called the uncircumcised, and (from their point of view) non-conforming, converts, “dogs,” as the Pharisees-proper called all Gentiles; cp. Matthew 15:26-27, for words alluding to this use of the term. The habits and instincts of the dog suggest ideas of uncleanness and wantonness; and its half-wild condition in Eastern towns adds the idea of a thing outcast. Thus everywhere in Scripture the word “dog” is used in connexions of contempt, reproach or dread: see e.g. 1 Samuel 24:14; 2 Samuel 16:9; 2 Kings 8:13; Psalms 22:16; Psalms 22:20; Psalms 59:6; Ecclesiastes 9:4; Matthew 7:6; Revelation 22:15.—The Apostle “here turns the tables” on the Judaist, and pronounces him to be the real defiled outcast from Messiah’s covenant, rather than the simple believer, who comes to Messiah not by way of Judaism, but direct. The same view is expressed more fully Galatians 5:2-4.—It is just possible that the word “dog” refers also to positive immorality underlying, in many cases, a rigid ceremonialism. But this is at most secondary here. See below Philippians 3:18-19, and notes, for another “school” more open to such charges.evil workers] Better, the bad work-men. He refers to the same faction under another aspect. Very probably, by a play on the word “worker,” he censures them as teaching a salvation by “works,” not by faith. (See e.g. Romans 3:27; Romans 4:2; Romans 4:6; Romans 11:6; Galatians 2:16; Galatians 3:2; Ephesians 2:9; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:5.) As if to say, “They are all for working, with a view to merit; but they are bungling workmen all the while, adjusting wrongly the fabric of the Gospel, and working not rightly even what in itself is right.” Cp. 2 Corinthians 11:13 for a passage where the same double meaning seems to attach to this word.—For the other side of the truth of “working” see Philippians 2:12, and notes.the concision] “The gashing, the mutilation.” By this harsh kindred word he satirizes, as it were, the rigid zeal of the Judaist for bodily circumcision. In the light of the Gospel, the demand for the continuance of circumcision in the Church, as a saving ordinance, was in fact a demand for a maltreatment of the body, akin only to heathen practices; cp. e.g. 1 Kings 18:28.Cp. Galatians 5:12, with Lightfoot’s notes, for a somewhat similar use of words in a kindred connexion. Lightfoot here remarks on the frequent occurrence in the N.T. of verbal play. See e.g. the Greek of Act 8:30; Romans 12:3; 2 Thessalonians 3:11.Wyclif curiously, and without any support in the Latin, renders this clause, “se ye dyuysioun”; Tyndale and Cranmer, “Beware of dissencion (dissensyon).”

Beware of dogs - Dogs in the east are mostly without masters; they wander at large in the streets and fields, and feed upon offals, and even upon corpses; compare 1 Kings 14:11; 1 Kings 16:4; 1 Kings 21:19.

2. Beware of dogs—Look to the dogs. Keep them in view, in order to learn their true character. Note, Matthew 7:6. The epithet implies religious impurity; and to this day dogs is the Moslem term for Christians.