Jude 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jude writes to Christians he calls loved and kept in Jesus Christ, and tells them he changed his plan: instead of writing about the salvation they share, he urges them to fight for the faith, because ungodly men have slipped in among them. He lists past examples of judgment and compares these men to Cain, Balaam, and Korah, then quotes a prophecy of Enoch and a warning from the apostles about scoffers in the last times. He closes by telling his readers to build themselves up, pray, keep themselves in God's love, and show mercy to others, and he ends with praise to God.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • Jude identifies himself as a servant of Jesus Christ.
   • Jude identifies himself as the brother of James.
   • The letter is addressed to those sanctified by God the Father.
   • Those addressed are preserved in Jesus Christ.
   • Those addressed are called.
2. 1:2
   • Jude wishes that mercy be multiplied to the recipients.
   • Jude wishes that peace be multiplied to the recipients.
   • Jude wishes that love be multiplied to the recipients.
3. 1:3
   • Jude addresses the recipients as beloved.
   • Jude was making every effort to write to them about the salvation they share in common.
   • It became necessary for Jude to write to them instead.
   • Jude urges them to contend earnestly for the faith.
   • The faith was delivered to the saints once for all.
4. 1:4
   • Certain men have slipped in unnoticed.
   • These men were long ago marked out in writing for this condemnation.
   • These men are ungodly.
   • They turn the grace of our God into licentiousness.
   • They deny the only Lord God.
   • They deny our Lord Jesus Christ.
5. 1:5
   • Jude intends to remind the recipients of something.
   • The recipients already knew this.
   • The Lord saved the people out of the land of Egypt.
   • Afterward the Lord destroyed those who did not believe.
6. 1:6
   • There were angels who did not keep their own position of rule.
   • Those angels left their own dwelling place.
   • He has kept those angels in everlasting chains under darkness.
   • They are kept for the judgment of the great day.
7. 1:7
   • Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them acted in the same manner as those angels.
   • Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities gave themselves over to sexual immorality.
   • They went after flesh of another kind.
   • They are set forth as an example.
   • They suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
8. 1:8
   • In the same way these men dream.
   • These men defile the flesh.
   • These men reject lordship.
   • These men speak evil of glorious beings.
9. 1:9
   • Michael is the archangel.
   • Michael contended with the devil.
   • Michael disputed with the devil about the body of Moses.
   • Michael did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against the devil.
   • Michael said, The Lord rebuke you.
10. 1:10
    • These men speak evil of the things they do not know.
    • These men understand some things instinctively, as irrational animals do.
    • By those things they understand instinctively they are corrupted.
11. 1:11
    • Jude pronounces woe upon them.
    • They have gone in the way of Cain.
    • They have poured themselves out in the error of Balaam for pay.
    • They have perished in the rebellion of Korah.
12. 1:12
    • These men are stains at your love feasts.
    • They feast together with you without fear.
    • They shepherd only themselves.
    • They are clouds without water.
    • Those clouds are carried along by winds.
    • They are late-autumn trees without fruit.
    • They are twice dead.
    • They are uprooted.
13. 1:13
    • They are wild waves of the sea.
    • Those waves foam out their own shameful deeds.
    • They are wandering stars.
    • The gloom of darkness has been reserved for them forever.
14. 1:14
    • Enoch was the seventh from Adam.
    • Enoch prophesied about these men.
    • Enoch said, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones.
15. 1:15
    • The Lord comes to execute judgment on all.
    • The Lord comes to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds.
    • They committed those deeds in an ungodly way.
    • The Lord comes to convict them of all the harsh things they spoke against him.
    • Those harsh things were spoken by ungodly sinners.
16. 1:16
    • These men are grumblers.
    • These men are complainers about their lot.
    • These men walk after their own lusts.
    • Their mouth speaks swollen, boastful words.
    • They show admiration for people's persons.
    • They do so for the sake of advantage.
17. 1:17
    • Jude tells the beloved to remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
18. 1:18
    • The apostles told them that in the last time there would be mockers.
    • Those mockers would walk after their own ungodly lusts.
19. 1:19
    • These are the ones who cause divisions.
    • These are natural, unspiritual men.
    • These do not have the Spirit.
20. 1:20
    • Jude addresses the recipients as beloved.
    • They are to build themselves up on their most holy faith.
    • They are to pray in the Holy Spirit.
21. 1:21
    • They are to keep themselves in the love of God.
    • They are to look for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
    • That mercy leads to eternal life.
22. 1:22
    • They are to have compassion on some.
    • They are to make a distinction among them.
23. 1:23
    • They are to save others with fear.
    • They are to snatch them out of the fire.
    • They are to hate even the garment stained by the flesh.
24. 1:24
    • He is able to keep you from falling.
    • He is able to present you faultless before the presence of his glory.
    • He does so with exceeding joy.
25. 1:25
    • He is the only wise God.
    • He is our Saviour.
    • Glory belongs to him.
    • Majesty belongs to him.
    • Dominion belongs to him.
    • Power belongs to him.
    • These belong to him both now and forever.
    • Amen.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"Servant" translates a Greek word that means a slave or bondservant, someone owned by a master, not a hired employee. The name Jude is the same name as Judas and Judah; the English forms differ only to keep him separate from Judas Iscariot. He identifies himself by his brother rather than by any office, and a James named with no further explanation would have meant, to first readers, the James who led the church in Jerusalem. Since early tradition knew that James as a brother of Jesus, this is also why Jude is usually taken to be one.

1:2

Mercy means being kind to someone instead of punishing them.

1:3

The King James "saints" does not mean a special class of canonized holy people. It translates a word meaning those set apart for God, and in these letters it covers every member of the congregation. "Once delivered" also carries more weight than modern English "once": the Greek word means once for all, delivered a single time and not to be handed over again in a revised form. "Contend" is a wrestling and athletic term, the effort of a contestant in a match.

1:4

"Before of old ordained to this condemnation" translates a verb that means written about beforehand, that is, described in advance in writing. What writing Jude means is not stated, and readers have proposed the prophets, the examples he lists next, or the book of Enoch he quotes later. The end of the verse is grammatically ambiguous in Greek: it can be read as denying two figures, God and Jesus, as the King James takes it, or as denying one, "our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."

1:5

"Though ye once knew this" uses "once" in the older sense of once for all, meaning you were taught it fully and need only reminding, not that you knew it at some time in the past. The manuscripts also differ sharply here on who did the rescuing: some of the earliest read "Jesus" where others read "the Lord" or "God." The episode referred to is Israel's rescue from Egypt followed by the death in the wilderness of the generation that refused to trust God, told in Numbers 14.

1:6

"First estate" translates a word meaning a rank, office, or sphere of authority, so the point is that these angels abandoned the position assigned to them. Jude is drawing on a well known Jewish story, built out of Genesis 6:1 to 4 and told at length in the book of Enoch, in which heavenly beings left heaven, took human wives, and were imprisoned in darkness to await judgment. His readers would have recognized the story immediately.

1:7

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire in Genesis 19, and by Jude's day they had become the standard example of catastrophic judgment. "Strange flesh" is literally "other flesh," flesh of a different kind. What the phrase points to is disputed: some take it of the men of Sodom seeking intercourse with the angelic visitors of Genesis 19, which would pair the city with the angels of verse 6 who crossed the same boundary in the opposite direction, and others take it more broadly of sexual transgression. The Greek leaves the question open.

1:8

"Dignities" is literally "glories," and "dominion" is an abstract noun meaning lordship or authority. Most readers understand both as referring to angelic powers, which is what makes Michael's restraint in the next verse the argument it is. "Filthy dreamers" is one word in Greek, simply "dreaming," which may mean these men claim visions and revelations, or may be a dismissal of them as living in a dream.

1:9

An archangel is a chief or ranking angel; Michael appears in Daniel 10 and 12 as the heavenly prince who defends Israel. "Durst not" means did not dare. The dispute over Moses' body is not told anywhere in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 34 says only that God buried Moses and no one knows the grave. Early Christian writers said Jude was quoting a Jewish book, usually identified as the lost ending of a work called the Assumption or Testament of Moses. "The Lord rebuke thee" is the same formula used against the accuser in Zechariah 3:2.

1:10

"Brute beasts" means animals without reason, acting purely on instinct. The King James "they corrupt themselves" and the modern "they are destroyed by these things" translate the same verb, which can be read either way; the Greek form is ambiguous between doing the ruining and suffering it.

1:11

Three figures every first-century reader knew. Cain murdered his brother in Genesis 4 and had become, in Jewish teaching of the period, the type of the man who rejects God and leads others astray. Balaam was the prophet hired by a foreign king to curse Israel in Numbers 22 to 24; later tradition, following Numbers 31:16, blamed him for taking money to lure Israel into sin, and made him the standard example of the greedy religious teacher. Korah led a revolt against the authority of Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16 and was swallowed by the earth. "Core" is simply the Greek spelling of Korah, and "gainsaying" means contradiction or rebellion. "Woe unto them" is not a curse Jude pronounces but the traditional prophetic cry of lament over people already headed for ruin.

1:12

"Feasts of charity" were the love feasts, the shared communal meal the early congregations ate together; "charity" in 1611 English meant love, not giving to the poor. The word translated "spots" can mean either a stain or a submerged rock that wrecks a ship, and both senses have been read here. "Trees whose fruit withereth" is literally "autumn trees," trees standing in the harvest season with nothing on them. "Twice dead" means fruitless and then uprooted, dead in both ways a tree can be dead.

1:13

"Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame" echoes Isaiah 57:20, where the wicked are like a troubled sea casting up mire. "Wandering stars" translates a word that gives us "planets," bodies that do not hold a fixed course. In the book of Enoch, which Jude quotes two verses later, stars that stray from their appointed paths are imprisoned in darkness, which is exactly the punishment named here.

1:14

This quotation is from the book of Enoch, chapter 1, verse 9, a Jewish work written in the centuries before Christ and widely read in Jude's time. It is not part of the Hebrew Bible or of most Christian Bibles, though it is scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition. "The seventh from Adam" counts inclusively down the line of Genesis 5: Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch. "Ten thousands" translates "myriads," the largest number with its own name in Greek and a standard way of saying a host beyond counting. "Saints" here means holy ones, and in this line refers to the angels who accompany God.

1:15

"Convince" in 1611 English meant to convict or to prove guilty in a legal sense, not to persuade someone of an opinion. "Hard speeches" means harsh or insolent words. The piling up of "ungodly" four times in one sentence is deliberate in the Greek as well.

1:16

"Murmurers" is the word used in the Greek Old Testament for Israel grumbling against God in the wilderness, so the charge carries that history with it. "Great swelling words" means inflated, boastful talk. "Having men's persons in admiration because of advantage" renders a Hebrew-flavored idiom, literally admiring faces, meaning to show favoritism or flatter someone important; "because of advantage" means for the sake of what they can get out of it.

1:17

The apostles were the men Jesus chose and sent out to teach about him. Their words carried weight, so Jude reminds his readers of a warning they had already been given.

1:18

"The last days" means the time before Jesus comes back.

1:19

"Sensual" here does not mean indulgent in physical pleasure, which is what the English word now suggests. It translates a Greek adjective built on the word for the soul or natural life, and it means merely human, operating on natural capacity alone, and so the opposite of the "spiritual" person. The verse defines it in its own next clause: they do not have the Spirit.

1:20

"Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" are the same phrase. "Ghost" in 1611 simply meant spirit, with none of the modern sense of an apparition of the dead.

1:22

The manuscripts of verses 22 and 23 vary more than almost anywhere else in the New Testament: some name two groups of people to be treated differently, some name three. The word behind "making a difference" is ambiguous in the same way in Greek. It can mean those who are wavering or in doubt, which is how most modern versions take it, or it can mean that you yourself make a distinction between cases. The King James takes the second sense; the uncertainty is in the text, not in the translating.

1:23

"Pulling them out of the fire" echoes Zechariah 3:2, where the high priest is called a brand snatched from the burning. The garment named in the second half is the tunic worn next to the skin. Under the purity rules of the Old Testament, clothing that had touched a source of defilement itself transmitted that defilement to whoever handled it, so the image is of rescuing someone while refusing to touch what has been contaminated.

1:24

"Faultless" translates a word meaning without blemish, used in the Greek Old Testament of animals inspected and found fit to be offered in sacrifice. "Keep you from falling" uses an adjective applied to a horse that does not stumble or a person who keeps their footing.

1:25

The manuscripts differ at the close. The later ones the King James translators worked from read "the only wise God," while the earliest read simply "the only God our Savior," and add two phrases the King James does not have: "through Jesus Christ our Lord," and "before all time" ahead of "both now and ever." "Dominion and power" means might and authority. "Amen" is a Hebrew word meaning truly or so be it, spoken by a congregation to make a prayer their own.