Swine

Swine is the pig, and in Scripture it is chiefly the animal Israel was forbidden to eat. Deuteronomy 14:8 gives the reason in the text itself: the pig has a split hoof but does not chew the cud, and so it is unclean — “You shall not eat their meat. You shall not touch their carcasses.” Linguistically, the Hebrew noun behind the prohibition is ḥazir, and the Greek of the Gospels uses choiros for pigs and hys for a sow (Matthew 7:6; Luke 15:16; 2 Peter 2:22). The law as stated concerns eating the meat and handling the carcass, not the keeping of animals.

Outside the dietary rule, swine works in Scripture mainly as an image. Psalm 80:13 pictures a boar from the wood ravaging the vine, a wild animal among the forces that lay the vineyard waste. Proverbs 11:22 uses the incongruity of “a gold ring in a pig’s snout” to describe beauty without discretion. In Isaiah the eating of pig’s meat marks out people the prophet condemns: those who sit among the graves and spend nights in secret places (Isaiah 65:4), those who purify themselves for garden rites and eat “pig’s meat, abominable things, and the mouse” (Isaiah 66:17), and — in a startling comparison — the one who offers “pig’s blood” set alongside the one who offers an offering (Isaiah 66:3). In each case the point is the food’s status as a sign of a wider disorder, not the animal in itself.

In the New Testament the associations carry over. Matthew 7:6 warns against throwing pearls before pigs, a saying about discernment over what is holy rather than about animals. The herd of pigs in the Gerasene country is the one Gospel scene where swine appear in number: the unclean spirits enter them and about two thousand drown in the sea (Mark 5:13), in a region the text places across the lake from Jewish Galilee (Matthew 8:28). Historically, that location in Gentile territory fits the presence of a large swine herd. In Luke 15:16 the prodigal’s hunger is measured by his longing for the pods the pigs ate, and 2 Peter 2:22 quotes the proverb of “the sow that has washed to wallowing in the mire” as a picture of return to former defilement.

Christian traditions read the underlying dietary rule differently. In this tradition — Jewish practice, and among Christians those groups that keep the food laws — Deuteronomy 14:8 remains a standing command. Most Christian churches hold that the Mosaic food restrictions are not binding on believers, while still reading the passage as Scripture and often as a figure of moral separation; the passages themselves do not settle the question, since none of them states how the rule is to be applied after Christ. Readings of the Gerasene herd also divide: some see judgment on a Gentile economy, some a demonstration of the demons’ destructive will, and some concentrate on the restored man rather than the animals.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.