Jude

This letter is from Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James. I am writing to those who have been set apart and loved by God the Father, who are kept safe in Jesus Christ, and who have been called by God.

1Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:

Note"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.

2May mercy, peace, and love be given to you again and again.

2Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.

3Dear friends, I was doing my best to write to you about the salvation we all share. But I found I had to write and urge you instead to fight hard for the faith that God handed over to his holy people once and for all.

3Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

NoteThe 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.

4I say this because certain men have slipped in among you without being noticed. Long ago it was written down that they would face this judgment. They have no respect for God. They twist the kindness of our God into an excuse for shameless sex, and they deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

4For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Note"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."

5So I want to remind you of something you already knew. The Lord rescued his people out of the land of Egypt, but later he destroyed the ones who did not believe.

5I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.

Note"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.

6And there were angels who did not stay in the place of authority that was theirs, but left the home that belonged to them. God has kept them in chains that never break, in darkness, until the judgment on that great day.

6And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Note"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.

7It was the same with Sodom and Gomorrah and the towns around them. They gave themselves over to sexual sin and went after flesh of another kind. They stand as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

7Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

NoteSodom 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.

8In the same way these dreamers make their own bodies dirty, refuse to accept anyone's authority, and insult glorious beings.

8Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.

Note"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.

9Yet even Michael, the chief angel, did not dare to bring an insulting charge against the devil when the two of them argued over the body of Moses. All he said was, "The Lord rebuke you."

9Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

NoteAn 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.

10But these men insult whatever they do not understand. And the things they do understand by instinct, the way animals do, are the very things that destroy them.

10But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.

Note"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.

11How terrible for them! They have taken the road Cain took. For money they have rushed headlong into the same mistake Balaam made. They have been destroyed in the same rebellion Korah led.

11Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

NoteThree 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.

12These men are stains at your shared meals of love. They eat with you without a trace of shame, and they feed no one but themselves. They are clouds with no rain, blown along by the wind. They are late-autumn trees without fruit, dead twice over, pulled up by the roots.

12These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;

Note"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.

13They are wild waves of the sea, throwing up the foam of their own shameful acts. They are stars that wander off course, and the deepest darkness has been kept for them forever.

13Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

Note"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.

14Enoch, who was the seventh in line from Adam, also spoke God's message about these men. He said, "Look, the Lord is coming with tens of thousands of his holy ones

14And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,

NoteThis 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.

15to judge everyone. He will prove guilty all the ungodly among them, both for every ungodly thing they have done and for every harsh word that ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

15To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Note"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.

16These men grumble and find fault. They live for whatever they crave. Their mouths are full of boasting, and they flatter people when there is something in it for them.

16These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.

Note"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.

17But you, dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ said would happen.

17But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ;

18They told you that in the last times there would be people who mock, people who live for their own ungodly cravings.

18How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.

19These are the ones who split people apart. They follow only their natural desires, and they do not have the Spirit.

19These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.

Note"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.

20But you, dear friends, are to build yourselves up on the foundation of your most holy faith, and to pray in the Holy Spirit.

20But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,

Note"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.

21Keep yourselves in God's love while you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, the mercy that brings eternal life.

21Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

22Show mercy to some, making a distinction among them.

22And of some have compassion, making a difference:

NoteThe 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.

23Save others with fear, snatching them out of the fire, hating even the clothing that their sinful living has stained.

23And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

Note"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.

24God is able to keep you from stumbling and to bring you into his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.

24Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,

Note"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.

25To him, the only wise God, our Savior, belong glory and majesty, rule and power, both now and forever. Amen.

25To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

NoteThe 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.