Dogs in Heaven? Rev. 22:14- 16

The dog is outside

English Standard Version (Chapter 22)

14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. 15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

-It is an unclean animal :Heb. keleḇ; Gk. kynárion). A domesticated carnivorous mammal (Canis familiaris) considered unclean by Mosaic law

Allen C. Myers, The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 290.

-Not always domesticated

Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (DOG)

Judging from canine skeletal fragments discovered near Jericho that date to Prepottery Neolithic times, dogs were domesticated long before the beginnings of Israelite history. In the Bible, however, the animal does not appear as a human’s companion until Hellenistic and Roman times (Tob. 5:16; Matt. 15:26–27).

-They have been an object of hatred by the Jews

Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (DOG)

The “wages of a dog” (so RSV at Deut. 23:18; cf. KJV) were not low earnings but the acquisitions of a male prostitute (so NIV, JB; RSV mg. “sodomite”). Later the unclean Gentiles were regarded as dogs (cf. Matt. 15:26 par.). It is thus not surprising that, according to Rev. 22:15, dogs are not among those entering heavenly Jerusalem.