Dictionaries :: Dung

Easton's Bible Dictionary

Dung:

(1.) Used as manure (Luk 13:8); collected outside the city walls (Neh 2:13). Of sacrifices, burned outside the camp (Exd 29:14; Lev 4:11; 8:17; Num 19:5). To be "cast out as dung," a figurative expression (1Ki 14:10; 2Ki 9:37; Jer 8:2; Psa 18:42), meaning to be rejected as unprofitable.

(2.) Used as fuel, a substitute for firewood, which was with difficulty procured in Syria, Arabia, and Egypt (Eze 4:12-15), where cows' and camels' dung is used to the present day for this purpose.

Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words

Dung:

denotes "refuse," whether

(a) "excrement," that which is cast out from the body, or

(b) "the leavings of a feast," that which is thrown away from the table. Some have derived it from kusibalon (with metathesis of k and s), "thrown to dogs;" others connect it with a root meaning "shred." Judaizers counted Gentile Christians as dogs, while they themselves were seated at God's banquet. The Apostle, reversing the image, counts the Judaistic ordinances as refuse upon which their advocates feed, Phl 3:8.

Dung:

"manure," Luk 13:8, used in the plural with ballo, "to throw," is translated by the verb "to dung." Some mss. have the accusative case of the noun kopria, "a dunghill." See below.

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Dung:

The uses of dung were two‐fold-as manure and as fuel. The manure consisted either of straw steeped in liquid manure (Isaiah 25:10) or the sweepings (Isaiah 5:25) of the streets and roads, which were carefully removed from about the houses, and collected in heaps outside the walls of the towns at fixed spots-hence the dung‐gate at Jerusalem-and thence removed in due course to the fields. The difficulty of procuring fuel in Syria, Arabia and Egypt has made dung in all ages valuable as a substitute. It was probably used for heating ovens and for baking cakes (Ezra 4:12; 4:15) the equable heat which it produced adapting it peculiarly for the latter operation. Cow's and camels dung is still used for a similar purpose by the Bedouins.