Day: March 1, 2026

“Truth, Lord; yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”

“Little dogs,” an intriguing term. Dogs are rarely mentioned in the Scriptures and rarely in a positive light. Sinners are said to be like dogs returning to their vomit, an image of our besetting sins; dogs lick the blood of Jezebel, another unattractive yet compelling image. To call someone a dog in the Old Testament was to suggest that they were worthless; in short, an insult. In Revelation or as in Philippians we are told: “Look out for the dogs … for the evil-workers.” Dogs, it seems, are evil. Don’t ask about cats. None here!

Isaiah speaks of “dumb dogs [that] cannot bark” (Is. 56.10), criticizing the watchmen, the leaders of Israel. More than a thousand years later that phrase was turned on its head to become an image for dogs as preachers, meaning dogs that do bark and, indeed, bark incessantly against “foxes and wolves,” the heretics that threaten “the sheep,” the faithful, as Gregory the Great imagines. Preaching as barking?! Just saying.

Several centuries later after him, it became an image for the Ordo Praedicatorum, St. Dominic’s Order of Preachers, later known as Dominicans, sometimes wrongly punned as the Domini Canes, the dogs of the Lord. But that is just bad Latin, a mistaken translation, and not historical except as an insult; in short, another myth. There is, however, nothing mythical about the dog with the flaming torch as the symbol of the Dominican order. And scripturally, at least in terms of the Old Testament Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Book of Tobias or Tobit, Tobias’ dog is mentioned twice as accompanying him.

It is the sole biblical instance of dogs viewed as faithful and loyal companions much like Odysseus’s dog, Argos, in the Odyssey. He alone recognises his master, though disguised as a beggar in his return to reclaim Ithaca, and then dies but without betraying him. Seeing Argos brings tears to Odysseus’ eyes. It is a touching scene. As Homer beautifully puts it, “Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years”.

In the New Testament, there are the dogs that are the companions of Lazarus who lies at the gate of Dives, the rich man, “full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table”. The dogs “came and licked his sores”. A moving image of compassion and care. No doubt, they, too, desired to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table which is the insight of this most powerful and yet disturbing story. Silence and rebuke and finally insult give way to mercy and grace. But how hard, how disturbing this must seem! The breakthrough moment is this remarkable woman’s last statement to Jesus: “Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”. Little dogs.

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