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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 22:15, outside are the dogs
The dogs shut out of the city may recall Deuteronomy's ban on bringing a dog's wages into God's house.
Revelation 22:15, in every translation this tool compares.
An old insult can carry the weight of the rule it first came from. Deuteronomy forbade Israel to bring a prostitute's fee or a dog's wages into the Lord's house. John lists dogs first among those left outside the city. The word ties the outsiders to the uncleanness once barred from God's house.
Dogs (kyon, kynes) kept out of God's dwelling. The Greek of Deuteronomy 23:18 forbids the price of a dog in the house of the Lord.
Deuteronomy bans a dog's wage from the temple; John bars dogs from the city. Deuteronomy pairs the dog with a prostitute's fee; John puts the dogs at the head of a list of sorcerers, the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters and liars. The sources do not agree on who the dogs are.
The city is the holy place, so what was unclean for the temple stays out. Beale reads the dogs as people who claim faith but serve idols. Paul uses the word that way in Philippians 3:2.
Not about animals. All the sources take dogs as a name for people, a common insult in the ancient world.
Beale says John's dogs, with those doing abomination in 21:27, suggest that Deuteronomy 23:18 is echoed, where the wages of a dog are linked with a harlot's fee and called an abomination not to be brought into the temple. He also cites Psalm 59:6, 14 and Isaiah 56:10-11, and hears the sin list of Malachi 3:5. Keener reads dogs as probably the sexually immoral, specifically unrepentant prostitutes, citing Deuteronomy 23:17-18. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible makes the same link and notes that dog was a common Greek insult. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cross-references Deuteronomy 23:18. The grade is possible: the shared word is one image, though several sources name the text.
Keener and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible read the dogs as male prostitutes. Beale reads them as apostates driven by greed. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible say false teachers, after Philippians 3:2. The ESV Study Bible names no Old Testament text.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 22:15
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 22:15
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 22:15
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 22:15
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 22:14-15, 17
- Septuagint, Deuteronomy 23:18, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 22:15
