No, it’s not about a Monty Python insult, well maybe a little.  Why does Peter end the second chapter of his second letter with bashing dogs and pigs?  It is difficult for us to understand what these animals represented to the ancient Israelites, because today these are two of our favorite creatures.  Bacon posts seem to have taken over Facebook and, in Bozeman at least, everyone seems to have at least one of man’s best friend.  But this was the opposite of an Israel under God’s Torah.  God repeats the theme of ‘you are my people, set apart’ over and over in the Pentateuch.  Part of that was a focus on clenliness which was a visual metaphor for holiness.  You serve a holy God so you will show it by being clean . Leviticus 10:10,11 This meant staying away from food that lived in the dirt. It even goes back to Genesis when God curses the serpent “the dust you shall eat. So durt immediately brings pigs to mind, but it also includes shellfish and reptiles.  There is also an emphasis on things which associate with carcases of unclean or even clean animals.  As most dog owners know dogs love to roll in filth and dead carcases, in addition Leviticus 11:27 calls them out as unclean, not to mention the vomit.  Which brings us to Peter’s mentioning of them.  Even to this day the middle east has very little respect for dogs, or pigs.  Typical dogs are mangy and roam the streets only to flee as people throw rocks at them, pigs are the ultimate insult.  We still have much of this in our language.  We have many insults about both these creatures.  As a side note ‘son of’ whatever is a phrase which means ‘the ultimate representative of’ so we have ‘Son of God’ often as the ultimate representative of God, or ‘son of a dog’ or Monty Python’s ‘son of a silly person’ as their respective insults.  The nature of these animals is uncleanness, just like the false teachers, or the fools conjured by the Proverbs 26:11 passage Peter alludes to.  So, try to avoid being the son of a heretic, for you are a people set apart as holy.