Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Jude 1:15

Jude 1:15. to execute judgment, i.e to pronounce the doom, and see that it is carried out. Then follows the description of these sinners. The characteristic of the antediluvians, as of those whom Jude addresses, is ungodliness: four times is this quality named, first and last and midst, in the description.

to convict (an intensive form of the English verb) in their consciences and before the world. The double meaning of the Greek word is only half represented by ‘convince,' and only half by ‘convict;' both meanings are in the word, though the second meaning is the predominant one here.

and of all the hard things rough, coarse; used here in its ethical sense, and especially to describe arrogant blasphemy (1 Samuel 2:3; Malachi 3:13) ‘stout,' the outcome of a hardened heart.

The prophecy here quoted is found almost literally in the Book of Enoch, which was formerly known only in fragments preserved in some of the Fathers, but has recently been discovered in an Ethiopian translation, and became known in Europe at the close of the last century. The book belongs probably to the beginning of the Christian era. Dorner ascribes it to the first century after Christ; Dilmann, who has published it, to the century before. It is really divisible into three parts, the original book, which includes this prophecy and several other things, and two different sets of additions by later though still early writers. The book contains many absurdities (e.g. the women with whom the angels had intercourse brought forth giants six thousand feet high, who first devoured all the produce of the earth, and then began to devour men themselves); and it differs in several particulars from Jude's statements. There is therefore no reason to suppose that Jude quotes it, though the prophecy of Enoch is found (with some important variations, however) in both. Every phrase in the prophecy has its parallel passage in the canonical Scriptures; and this fact may explain the facility and accuracy with which the tradition was transmitted. All, in fact, that is new in this prophecy is that he, Enoch, delivered it a thing in itself highly probable. Of course the Holy Ghost might have revealed it immediately to Jude; but it may be said, as before, that this explanation is forbidden by the form and the very purpose of the quotation itself. The writer is appealing to what is already known in support of his argument

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Jude 1:15

Old Testament

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