Charles Ellicott Commentary Philippians 3:2

"Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision:" — Philippians 3:2 (ASV)

Beware of (the) dogs.—In Revelation 22:15, “the dogs” excluded from the heavenly Jerusalem seem to be those who are impure. In that sense, the Jews applied the word to the heathen, as our Lord, for a moment appearing to follow Jewish usage, does to the Syro-Phoenician woman in Matthew 15:26.

But here the context applies the word to the Judaising party, who claimed special purity (ceremonial and moral) and who probably were not characterised by peculiar impurity—an impurity that, as indeed noted below (Philippians 3:17–21), seems rather to be associated with the Antinomian party, probably the extreme on the other side.

Chrysostom’s suggestion that the Apostle means to turn the name back on them is likely correct: by their own wilful apostasy, they now occupy the place outside the spiritual Israel that once belonged to the despised Gentiles.

Yet perhaps there is also an allusion to dogs, not merely as unclean, but as snarling and savage—especially in their half-wild state in the East—driving off as interlopers anyone who approaches what they consider their ground. Nothing could better describe the narrow Judaising spirit.

Of evil workers.—Compare 2 Corinthians 11:13, which describes the Judaisers as deceitful workers. Here the idea is of their energy in their work, but it is work for evil.

The concision.—By an ironical play on words, St. Paul declares his refusal to call the circumcision, on which the Judaisers prided themselves, by that time-honoured name; for, as he says, we are the true circumcision, the true Israel of the new covenant.

In Ephesians 2:11 (see Note), he had described it as the “so-called circumcision in the flesh made by hands.” Here, he speaks more strongly and calls it concision—a mere outward mutilation, no longer, as it had been, a seal of the covenant (Romans 4:11). There is an even more startling attack on the advocates of circumcision in Galatians 5:12 (see Note).