Verse 2
2. Beware of dogs Look to the dogs. Keep them in view, in order to learn their true character. Note, Matthew 7:6. The epithet implies religious impurity; and to this day dogs is the Moslem term for Christians. The evil workers The same persons, agitators for mischief.
The concision The word means an excision, or cutting off. Note, Galatians 5:12. The term defines the opponents of whom they were to beware, as Judaizing teachers who sought to enforce the Mosaic law on Gentile Christians, beginning with circumcision as necessary to salvation. They do not appear to have made, as yet, any inroads upon the Philippian Church, but the caution here given implies danger from that quarter. The contemptuous name here employed, plain in the Greek with the play on words, implies that having lost sight of the spiritual import of the rite, they were mere outward manglers of the flesh.
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