Jude 1:13

Jude 1:13. They are at once rocks and waves, wild waves of the sea, which ‘cannot rest,' and throw up only ‘mire and dirt' (Isaiah 57:20).

foaming out their own shame their lusts ‘disgraceful.'

wandering stars (comets or meteors, not planets), which neither light the world nor guide the mariner, but after blazing awhile drift into ‘the blackness and darkness which is kept (‘in reserve') for them, and into which they sink and sink ‘for ever.' All that is mischievous, useless, disastrous in sea or land or sky becomes in turn the symbol of the character and the destiny of these bad men.... The ‘feasts of charity' or of love (Agapae) spoken of in these verses are not strictly the Lord's Supper, though it is probable that the observance of the Lord's Supper was sometimes connected with them. The historical facts, the use of the pronoun ‘y our feasts of love' (Jude 1:12), and the customs spoken of in 1 Corinthians 11, all point to a wider meaning. They seem to have been social gatherings of Christians for promoting kindly feeling and helping the poor. Dr. Lightfoot notes (on 1 Corinthians 10:16) that the Jews had meetings of this kind at the close of their Sabbath, and found a sanction for them in Deuteronomy 12:5; Deuteronomy 12:7; Deuteronomy 12:12; Deuteronomy 14:23-29. Pliny and Tertullian both speak of them, and distinguish them from the simple Eucharist, Pliny apparently (x. 97, 98), and Tertullian certainly. In the fourth century the Council of Carthage forbade the holding of them in the churches; and the transference of the Lord's Supper from the evening to the morning originated in part in the abuses to which the blending of the two led.