# Jude commentary

The book is a very short one, grouped with no chapters and 25 verses.

Thematically, it is several portions:

- 1-2: greeting
- 3-16: description of the narcissists who corrupt the Church
- 17-23: clear call to the believers to persevere
- 24-25: a doxology that wraps it up

## 5

This is a clear indication of Jesus in the Old Testament, which asserts against New Testament-only thinking.

## 5-12

3 examples:

1. The people who needed to be destroyed after leaving Egypt from unbelief.
2. Angels who left their appropriate dwelling (i.e., early Genesis events) and had to be bound with chains under darkness.
3. Sodom and Gomorrah's major metro area indulged in sexual immorality and sought strange flesh are an example of those who sustain the punishment of hell.

It's a direct description of them.

1. defiling their bodies
2. rejecting authority
3. slandering glorious beings
4. slandering what they don't understand

They are compared to other people in the Bible:

1. going the same way as Cain
2. ambitious for profit like Balaam
3. dying like Korah's rebellion (reference to previous)

It gives comparative poetry.

- hidden reefs in the love feasts
  - sharing in the feast without shame but only shepherding themselves
- clouds without water that the wind carries along
  - this portrays their utter unimportance
- fruitless trees in autumn
  - they are dead twice after being uprooted (dead in their existence, but also their utility)
- wild waves of the sea that foam up their own shame
- wandering stars that blackest darkness has been reserved forever
  - this can both refer to planets/meteors in the ancient world (useless for navigation), but also can refer to the fallen angels

It also describes what will happen to them.

- will be destroyed like irrational animals by the things they do instinctively

## 9

Michael demonstrates humility by saying "God rebukes you".

It references the Assumption of Moses (aka Testament of Moses), which is similar to verse 14's Enoch reference.

## 14

This is an antagonism against the people who believe sola scriptura (since it references Enoch 1:9), but also more broadly against the so-called "Christians" who assume the Bible is in a divine vacuum.

God does have a sense of humor, and any ungodly sinner who speaks a harsh word against God's "lesser word" is guilty of the condemnation in this verse.