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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Deuteronomy 23:17 - 23:17
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On the other hand, male and female prostitutes of Israelitish descent were not to be tolerated; i.e., it was not to be allowed, that either a male or female among the Israelites should give himself up to prostitution as an act of religious worship. The exclusion of foreign prostitutes was involved in the command to root out the Canaanites. קָדֵּשׁ and קְדֵשָׁה were persons who prostituted themselves in the worship of the Canaanitish Astarte (see at Gen 38:21). - “The wages of a prostitute and the money of dogs shall not come into the house of the Lord on account of (ל, for the more remote cause, Ewald, §217) any vow; for even both these (viz., even the prostitute and dog, not merely their dishonourable gains) are abomination unto the Lord thy God.” “The hire of a whore” is what the kedeshah was paid for giving herself up. “The price of a dog” is not the price paid for the sale of a dog (Bochart, Spencer, Iken, Baumgarten, etc.), but is a figurative expression used to denote the gains of the kadesh, who was called κίναιδος by the Greeks, and received his name from the dog-like manner in which the male kadesh debased himself (see Rev 22:15, where the unclean are distinctly called “dogs”).