When to Walk Away
Matthew 7:6
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.” — Matthew 7:6
At first glance, verse 6 seems to flatly contradict everything Jesus just said. He spent five verses warning against judging, and now He’s telling us to identify certain people as dogs and pigs? What is going on?
The tension is entirely intentional. Verses 1–5 warn against being a faultfinder. Verse 6 warns against the opposite extreme: being hopelessly naive. The passage holds two guardrails in tension: don’t be harshly judgmental, but don’t be a fool either. Don’t condemn, but do discern.
In first-century Jewish culture, both dogs and pigs were ceremonially unclean. A dog was a scavenger and considered brutal and contemptuous. Giving sacred altar meat (what was holy) to a street dog was an act of profound desecration. A pig had no use for a pearl (couldn’t eat it, couldn’t appreciate it) and would trample it and then turn on the giver. Jesus uses these images to describe people who are not merely confused or searching, but who are obstinately, aggressively hostile to the things of God.
Jon Courson describes verse 6 as Jesus’ authorisation to walk away. It is the permission slip to stop pouring yourself into a conversation that has become spiritually toxic; not because the person has no value, but because the moment is wrong and the resistance is hardened. Jesus modelled this Himself: when Herod wanted entertainment rather than truth, Jesus gave him silence (Luke 23:8–9). Paul did it in Antioch: when the synagogue leaders turned hostile, he said simply, “We now turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). Not defeat. Discernment.
Proverbs 9:7–8 says it plainly: “Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you.” Wisdom knows the difference between a searching sceptic and a hardened scoffer. One deserves patient engagement. The other deserves gracious disengagement — and prayer.
Reflect: Is there a relationship or conversation where you have been pressing on past the point of wisdom? What might gracious disengagement look like in that situation?