Luke 16:21 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

And desiring to be fed with the crumbs. — The habits of the East, the absence of knives and forks and the like, made the amount of waste of this kind larger than do the habits of modern Europe. (Comp. the language of the Syro-Phœnician woman, in Mark 7:28.) Here the picture is heightened by two touches. The dogs are there, and get the crumbs, which the man fails to get, and then they come and lick the open sores. The question has been raised whether this touch is meant to intensify the sufferings of the beggar, or to contrast the almost human sympathy of the brute with the brutal apathy of the man. In a European apologue the latter might, perhaps, be a legitimate explanation of the fact thus stated; but with the Eastern feelings, that see in the dog an unclean beast, the scavenger of the streets, we cannot doubt that the beggar would have shrunk from their licking, even assuming, which is doubtful, that it brought with it some relief from merely physical pain. It may be noted, too, that the word for “dogs” is not the diminutive form used in Matthew 15:27, and Mark 7:28 (where see Note), which implied tameness, but that which is always associated with the idea of abhorrence (Matthew 7:6; Philippians 3:2; 2 Peter 2:22; Revelation 22:15).