Pearls Before Swine: A Fresh Look at an Old Proverb

In Matthew 7:6 we find one of those perfectly-cut gems of proverbial wisdom that Jesus was famous for. “Do not give what is holy to the dogs or cast your pearls before swine,” he warns us. “If you do, they may trample them under feet and turn and tear you to pieces.”

It is certainly one of his best-remembered sayings, and also, probably, one of his least understood. At least, when I googled “what does it mean to cast pearls before swine?” I got all sorts of generic explanations of the saying, almost none of which had much to do with anything Jesus might actually have meant when he said it. Collinsdictionary.com suggests that if someone is “casting pearls before swine,” it means that “they are wasting their time by offering something that is helpful or valuable to someone who does not appreciate it or understand it.” Dictionary.com says it means “[wasting] good things on people who will not appreciate them.” And Gotquestions.org says that it has to do with sharing the gospel with someone who continually scoffs and ridicules Christ.

Certainly, all these definitions fall roughly in line with how the saying gets used now-adays, but when you look the verse up in Matthew’s gospel and try to read it in context, it seems like Jesus has something much more specific in mind, than simply a general warning not to waste something good on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

In its original context, Matthew 7:6 comes as an apparent stand-alone proverb, following an extended teaching about not judging others, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. I say “apparent,” because, even though almost every commentary I’ve read on Matthew sees this verse as a “one-off” saying of Jesus, dropped into this passage about judging others sort of at random, I have come to believe that Jesus’s warning against throwing pearls to pigs is actually much more closely connected to his warning about judging others than any of us might suspect.

Admittedly, on the surface, the proverb in Matthew 7:6 doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything that comes before it or anything that follows. When I scratch the surface, though, I can’t help but think that this vivid image, both ridiculous and sobering, of a fool who risks getting torn apart by swine, because he foolishly cast his most valuable possession—his pearls—to them, is actually meant to be a proverbial summary of Matthew 7:1-5, a metaphorical description of how foolish and risky a thing it is to judge our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Let me explain.

In Matthew 7:1-5 we have a negative imperative—that is to say, a prohibition—against something that comes pretty naturally to human nature: “Do not judge.” The motivation for this prohibition is then given: “So that you yourself will not be judged,” and then the reasoning: “Because you will be judged by the same standard you use to judge others.” In other words, “If you judge others, you will, in turn, come under the same judgement you use against them.”

From here, Jesus gives us a metaphorical description of what it is like to judge others: it’s like trying to remove the speck from your brother’s eye while you have a plank in your own eye (vv. 3-5). The image is both ridiculous and sobering (made especially sober at the end, when Jesus calls the hypothetical person who might judge his brother in this way a ‘hypocrite’).

All this is well and good, and pretty straight forward, but notice how closely verse 6 follows this pattern: it begins with a negative imperative (do not cast pearls before swine). We’re then told that if we throw pearls to swine, the swine will trample the pearls and then, in turn, tear at us. What we’ve done to the pearls, so to speak, will happen to us. And as with the image of the guy with a plank in his eye, this image, too, of casting precious pearls to ravenous swine, is equally ridiculous and sobering.

Taken together, these parallels suggest that verse 6 (the saying about casting pearls before swine) is meant to be a follow up, proverbial elaboration, on what it means to judge our brothers and sisters, and why we dare not do so.

If the parallels are not clear, yet, they might become clearer if we simply asked ourselves: “In what ways is giving holy, or precious things (in verse 6) analogous to judging others, the way Jesus describes it in verses 1-5?”

As soon as you frame it like that, a number of obvious parallels bob to the surface. Like the person who judges his brother, the person who treats a “holy thing” contemptuously is being a hypocrite. Like the one who—by judging his brother—ridiculously ignores the beam in his own eye, the one who throws precious things to filthy swine is acting like a fool. Like the one who will be judged for having judged his brother in this way, the one who lets pigs trample something that should be highly prized and deeply valued (the pearl) will be trampled and torn by those same pigs in return.

When you see it in this light, Matthew 7:6 functions as a kind of proverbial warning-bell, a quick, vivid, ready-at-hand image meant to flash across the mind any time you are tempted to cast disparaging, self-righteous, hypocritical, or simply-uncharitable judgment on another. Because, if you give into that temptation and judge your brother or sister, Jesus says, you’ll be no better than the pathetic fool who takes a precious pearl that they ought to be cherishing, and instead of treasuring it, they toss it in the mud before some filthy swine (and if it’s not clear yet, let me state it bluntly here: the pearl is the brother or sister you are judging, in that moment, and by judging them, you are taking someone who should be loved and treating them as though they are worthless). It’s a ridiculous thing to do, but also foolhardy, because the truth about judging is this: we will be judged by the same standard we use to judge others; and if that’s so, then it’s all kinds of guaranteed—in the terms of our pearls-before-swine analogy—it guaranteed that after we’ve tossed the pearl that is our brother to the “swine” of self-righteous condemnation—those same swine will turn and trample us likewise.

May this picture give all of us pause, the next time we find ourselves standing in judgement of others, or feeling tempted to do so; may it remind us, with all the good humor and profound wisdom that characterized the best of Jesus’s teaching—that to do so is the spiritual equivalent of throwing pearls to pigs.