Jude 1:13

raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame Image follows on image to paint the shameless enormities of the false teachers. In this we trace an echo of the thought, though not of the words, of Isaiah 57:20. The same image meets us, though in a milder form, and to express a different type of spiritual evil, in James 1:6. The Greek word for "shame" is in the plural, as indicating the manifold forms of the impurity of the false teachers.

wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever The latter words are parallel to 2 Peter 2:17. The word for "wandering stars" is that which in the terminology of astronomy distinguishes the "planets" from the fixed stars. Here, however, the ordered regularity of planetary motion supplies no fit point of comparison, and we may probably see in the words a reference either to comets or shooting stars, whose irregular appearance, startling and terrifying men, and then vanishing into darkness, would present an analogue to the short-lived fame and baleful influence of the false teachers whom St Jude has in view. They too were drifting away into the eternal darkness.