Jude 1:11

Jude 1:11. Woe to them. This expression is often used by our Lord, but never elsewhere except in Jude and in Revelation. (Paul's use, ‘Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel,' is different.) The words may mean, ‘Woe is to them,' a description of their miserable condition, present or future, uttered as a warning to others (Calvin); or even ‘Alas for them,' expressive of pity (Newcome); or as generally expressive of pain and indignation, a censure and a threat: in any case the word speaks of evil and woe, whether uttered in the tone of compassion which bewails it (Matthew 23:15), or of the indignation that imprecates it (Matthew 11:21). Here the context favours the idea that it is neither pity nor imprecation, for their sin is strongly condemned, and they are said to have been punished; but a cry of horror on taking in at one glance the whole course of their ungodliness, and its final plunge into the dark abyss (as in Revelation 18:16; Revelation 18:19).

for in the way of Cain have they walked (so Jude 1:16; Jude 1:18). Like him have they lived, gratifying the passions and selfish instincts of their nature, in contempt of the warnings of God and His word. (Envy of others; murder, literal or figurative destroying others by their teaching; godlessness, are all more or less inaccurate; it is the character of selfish immoral deceivers that is described.)

and in the error; generally a sinful moral fault a vicious life, that leaves the way of truth (James 5:20; 2 Peter 2:18) ‘in the error,' i.e in the direction (not by the seduction of Balaam's reward de Wette nor into the sin of, but as in the previous clause, ‘in the way of') of Balaam (of selfish avarice, gratified even in the sin and ruin of others).

have they run greedily (the verb means to pour one's self out on, or to give one's self up to a thing).

in the gainsaying (the rebellion. See note on Hebrews 12:3) of Koran; insurrection against the Lord under cover of right and freedom.

have they perished. The beginning, therefore, and the end of their way are illustrated in this threefold history. The general sins of these apostates have been variously defined, ‘envy, covetousness, pride; murder, seduction of others for the sake of gain, rebellion against Divine authority' all have been used to describe their motives and sins. In all there is this quality predominant, that they knew God and His truth, and their knowledge was perverted by selfishness or covetousness or pride to results eminently immoral and disastrous.