Swine

(Heb. hazir), regarded as the most unclean and the most abhorred of all animals (Lev. 11:7; Isa. 65:4; 66:3, 17; Luke 15:15, 16). A herd of swine were drowned in the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8:32, 33). Spoken of figuratively in Matt. 7:6 (see Prov. 11:22). It is frequently mentioned as a wild animal, and is evidently the wild boar (Arab. khanzir), which is common among the marshes of the Jordan valley (Ps. 80:13).

חזיר, Lev. xi, 7; Deut. xiv, 8; Psalm lxxx, 13; Prov. xi, 22; Isaiah lxv, 4; lxvi, 3, 17; χοῖρος, Matt. vii, 6; viii, 30; Mark v, 14; Luke viii, 33; xv, 15; the plural of hog, an animal well known. In impurity and grossness of manners, this creature stands almost unrivalled among the order of quadrupeds; and the meanness of his appearance corresponds to the grossness of his manners. He has a most indiscriminate, voracious, and insatiable appetite. The Prophet Isaiah, lxv, 4, charges his degenerate people with eating swine’s flesh, and having broth of abominable things in their vessels, Isaiah lxvi, 3. Conduct so contrary to their solemn engagements, so hateful in the sight of the Holy One, though long endured, was not always to pass with impunity. “They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens, behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord,” Isaiah lxvi, 17. Such a sacrifice was an abomination to the Lord, because the eating of the blood was prohibited, and because the sacrifice consisted of swine’s flesh. To these precepts and threatenings, which were often enforced by severe judgments may be traced the habitual and unconquerable aversion of the latter Jews to the use of swine’s flesh; an aversion which the most alluring promises and the most cruel sufferings have been found alike insufficient to subdue. In such detestation was the hog held by the Jews that they would not so much as pronounce its name, but called it “the strange thing;” and we read in the history of the Maccabees, that Eleazer, a principal scribe, being compelled by Antiochus Epiphanes to open his mouth and receive swine’s flesh, spit it forth, and went of his own accord to the torment, choosing rather to suffer death than to break the law of God, and give offence to his nation, 2 Mac. vi, 18; vii, 1. It is observed that when Adrian rebuilt Jerusalem, he set up the image of a hog, in bas-relief, upon the gates of the city, to drive the Jews away from it, and to express the greater contempt for that miserable people. It was avarice, a contempt of the law of Moses, and a design to supply the neighbouring idolaters with victims, that caused whole herds of swine to be fed on the borders of Galilee. Whence the reason is plain of Christ’s permitting the devils to throw the swine headlong into the lake of Genesareth, Matthew viii, 32. We read, in Matthew vii, 6, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” There is a similar maxim in the Talmudical writings: “Do not cast pearls before swine;” to which is added, by way of explanation, “Do not offer wisdom to one who knows not the value of it, but profanes its glory.”