Jude 1:7-11

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Jude 1:7. Giving themselves over.—ἐκπορνεύσασαι; the ἐκ denotes the intensity of their lust, which would be gratified at all hazards. Strange flesh.—Other flesh; præter naturam; Romans 1. Eternal fire.—As eternal is a spiritual quality, and fire a material substance, the association of the two terms must be figurative, and suggestive of moral truth. Vengeance.—Is of course “just punishment,” not “unrestrained feeling.”

Jude 1:8. Filthy dreamers.—Omit the adjective. We call similar persons “mystics”; and with such there is always peril of neglecting the moral claims of religion. “Under the plea of spiritual perfection, these men have indulged in carnal pollutions, have sinned against themselves, have held tenets subversive of all civil authority and constituted government, have formed degrading conceptions of heavenly glories, or of glorified beings, as saints and angels, reducing the hope of the Church to the sensual delights of a Mahometan paradise.”

Jude 1:9. Michael the archangel.—For the legends concerning him, see Illustrations. See Zechariah 3:2; Daniel 10:21; Daniel 12:1; Revelation 12:7. There can be no doubt that an unhistorical incident is here cited as a warning; and our theories of inspiration must be such as can admit this fact.

Jude 1:10.—“What they do not know, and cannot know, they abuse by gross irreverence. What they know, and cannot help knowing, they abuse by gross licentiousness.”

Jude 1:11.—Three examples of similar wickedness. The stories of Cain, Balaam, and Korah. The root-evil in each case is covetousness. There were singular Rabbinic legends associated with Cain. Balaam’s advice to seduce Israel to moral evil is in mind (2 Peter 2:15). “A strange legend placed the souls of Korah and his company in Gehenna, but represented them as not being tormented there.”