Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Deuteronomy 23:18 - 23:18
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
This is opposed to the practice of the Gentiles, who allowed both such persons and their oblations they made out of their wicked and infamous gains; and some of them kept lewd women, who prostituted themselves in the temples, and to the honour of their false gods, and offered part of their profit to them. See Mic_1:7; /APC Bar_6:43; Herodotus in the end of his first book, and Strabo in his eighth book. The price of a dog; either,
1. Properly; the dog being a vile and contemptible creature in those eastern parts, 1Sa_17:43 24:14 2Sa_3:8 Ecc_9:4, and unclean by God’s designation, which yet should have been redeemed by virtue of that law. Num_18:15, had it not been for this prohibition. And this may be here prohibited, either,
1. That by this one instance, put for all others of the like kind, they might be taught not to offer to God what cost them nothing, or was worth nothing. Or,
2. To bring contempt upon the creature, which divers of the Gentiles offered up to their gods, and the Egyptians worshipped as gods. Or,
3. That by comparing whores and dogs together, and equalling the prices of them, he might expose whores to the highest disgrace and infamy. Or,
II. Metaphorically, as that word is oft used in Scripture, as 1Sa_24:14 Psa_22:16,20 Isa 56:10,11 Mt 7:6 Phi_3:2; and particularly it is used for unclean or filthy persons, 2Pe_2:22 Rev_22:15; as Horace also calls whores bitches; which name doth most properly agree to them in respect of that impudence, and filthiness, and insatiableness, for which both of them are branded. And this sense may seem most proper in this place, because it agrees with all the other expressions; and as the hire of a whore answers to the whore, Deu_23:17, so the price of a dog may seem to answer to the sodomite, Deu_23:17, and so all concerned the same thing, whereas the price of a dog, properly so called, may seem to be quite incongruous, and foreign to the place. It is true which is objected, that lawgivers use to deliver their laws in proper, and not in metaphorical terms, to prevent mistake and ambiguity; but there seems to be no great danger of mistake here, where the metaphor is so clearly explained and determined by so many words joined with it. For any vow; and much less in other sacrifices, which being of a higher nature, and prescribed by God, must needs require more exactness than those which depended much upon a man’s will and choice, as vows and free-will offerings did. Both these, i.e. the whore and the dog, and therefore the price of either of them cannot be acceptable. And this may seem to favour the latter opinion, that the dog is here taken metaphorically rather than properly, because there is no mention in the law (save in this place which is in question) of any abominableness of a dog unto God, more than of an ass, or any other unclean creature; but how abominable sodomites are to God is sufficiently evident from other scriptures, and from undeniable reasons.