Bede : And the Philistine said to David: Am I a dog? etc. Whether you understand the power of the Savior or the wood of the cross, it refers to the same meaning. For the most arrogant enemy denies that he is like a dog, that is, despicable in work and weakness. Moreover, he denies that the patience of the Savior and the power to overcome him would be comparable to all those who pass through the life of this world, pursuing with dire, insane, furious, and barking, and tearing with bites. Let us see what he thinks about the adversary that has come forth. For he says to the Father: Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog (Psalms 22). But elsewhere he has also marked the members of the same adversary to be compared to dogs, when he says: It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs (Matthew 15). However, by ministering the children's bread to them, he converted many of the most shameless or rabid dogs into the most chaste and meek sheep. — Commentary on Samuel Bede : And the Philistine cursed David by his gods, etc. The devil curses the living and true God when he does not fear to present as gods to mortals the spirits deceived by him and for this reason damned and to be damned to eternal fire. Furthermore, arguing against the spiritual men of the Church as if they belong to a carnal life, he boasts that they can be subdued by his own teachers, who are partly heavenly beings of angelic nature and partly mortals of earthly flesh, claiming that the members should be transferred. He also curses the body of the true David through heretics by his gods, teaching to prefer fabricated thoughts from his heart and forged in the worst fire over evangelical truth, which, teaching carnally, presume that they can overcome the statements or actions of the spiritual ones. Such things more fit the proud philosophers of the gentiles or certain barbarians (for to these, birds of the sky and beasts of the earth can be very fittingly compared) than the education and humility of the Church. — Commentary on Samuel