As in 2 Peter 2:15, the darkest passages in the Old Testament history are again appealed to. While Peter, however, refers only to a single instance, Jude introduces three, and prefaces the whole by a Woe! such as the Gospels repeatedly attribute to Christ himself. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain; rather, they went in the way of Cain. The phrase is the familiar one for a habitual course of conduct (Psalms 1:1; Acts 9:31; Acts 14:16, etc.). But what is the point of the comparison? Cain is supposed to be introduced as the type of murderous envy, of the persecuting spirit, or of those who live by the impulse of nature, regardless of God or man. In John 3:12 he is the type of all that is opposed to the sense of brotherhood, the murderer of the brother whose righteous works are an offence to him; but in the present passage he is introduced rather as the first and, in some respects, the most pronounced example of wickedness which the Old Testament offers—a wickedness defying God and destroying man. And ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward. The "error" in view is a life diverted from righteousness and truth. The verb rendered "ran greedily," or "ran riotously,'' is a very strong one, meaning they "were poured out," and expressing, therefore, the baneful absoluteness of their surrender to the error in question. Otherwise the construction of the sentence is so far from obvious that various renderings are proposed: e.g., "They gave themselves wholly up to the error of Balaam for the sake of a reward;" "By the seduction of Balaam's reward they committed excess of wickedness;" "They went to excess by Balaam's error, which was one determined by gain." The first of these is adopted, with some modification, by the Revised Version, and comes nearest the idea, which is that of men losing themselves in riotous excess for the sake of worldly advantage. The point of the analogy between Balaam and them, therefore, is, not his enticing Israel to idolatry or to immorality, as some understand it, but the covetous spirit which the Old Testament and the New alike attribute to the prophet of Pethor, to which also the Book of Numbers carries back the entire debasement of his character and perversion of his gifts. And perished in the gainsaying of Core. The term which is very fitly rendered "gainsaying" by the English Version here ("contradiction" in the Rhemish Version; "treason" in Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan) denotes properly an opposition expressing itself in words. It is, therefore, aptly applied to the rebellion of Korah and his company, who "gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you," etc. (Numbers 16:3). The analogy between the two cases, consequently, is limited by some to the assertion of an unregulated liberty, the assumption of a self-invented holiness, or the adoption of a worship which was alien to God. It lies in the broader idea of a contemptuous and determined assertion of self against divinely appointed ordinances.
The next two verses carry on the description of the men in a running fire of epithets and figures, short, sharp, and piercing, corresponding also at certain points with 2 Peter 2:13-17. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. What is referred to appears not to be ordinary friendly gatherings or occasions for the interchange of affection, but the well-known agapae, or love-feasts, of the primitive Church, the meals provided in connection with the Lord's Supper, at which rich and poor sat down together. In adopting the rendering "spots," the English Version follows Tyndale, Cranmer, the Genevan, and the Rhemish, and is followed by some good interpreters on the ground that the term, though formally different, is essentially the same as that in 2 Peter 2:13. The word itself, however, properly means "rocks," and therefore the point may be that their immoral conduct makes these men like treacherous reefs, on which their fellows make shipwreck. So the Revised Version gives "hidden rocks" in the text, and transfers "spots" to the margin. The "without fear," which is usually attached to the third clause, is connected by some with the second, in which case it expresses the reckless, irreverent spirit in which these men joined in the sacred agape. The last clause, "feeding [or, 'pasturing'] themselves," describes them further as having no regard to the proper object of these love-feasts in ministering to Christian fellowship and the holy sense of brotherhood, but as using them simply as a means for the saris-faction of their own appetites and the furtherance of their own base ends. Compare the evils referred to by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:21, and the description of the shepherds in Ezekiel 34:1-31, and Isaiah 56:11. "They are like shepherds," says Humphry, "that have themselves for their flocks, feasting themselves, not their sheep, and doing this without fear of the chief Shepherd, who has his eye upon them." Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; or, carried past by winds. Like rainless clouds, the sport of the uncertain breezes, yielding nothing for the fruitfulness of earth, these empty, volatile, inconstant men disappoint the expectation of the Church and do it no service. Trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. The Authorized Version is less happy than usual in its rendering of the first clause. The Revised Version, in adopting "autumn trees" instead of "trees whose fruit withereth," returns to the renderings of the earlier versions, Wickliffe giving "harvest trees," Tyndale and Cranmer "trees without fruit at gathering-time," and the Rhemish "trees of autumn." The idea of uselessness and unfruitfulness, which was expressed in the previous figure, is repeated, but in a more absolute form, in this new figure. The late autumn is not the time, from the Eastern point of view, for the putting forth of fruit. The tree then becomes bare, barren, leafless. So is it with these men. Nor is it only that they have no fruit to show. The capacity of fruitfulness is extinct within them. The possibility of recovering it is gone from them. They are as dead to all good service as trees are which are rooted out as hopelessly useless. The phrase, "twice dead," may mean no more than "utterly dead." The point, however, is rather this—that they are dead, not only in respect of barrenness—which is a death in life—but in respect of the extinction of all vitality. Raging (or, wild) waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; or shames, as the original gives it; that is to say, shameful deeds, or, it may be, the degrading lusts which inspire their unlicensed life (Huther). This comparison recalls at once the figure in Isaiah 57:20. Wandering stars, to whom is (or, has been) reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. In the Book of Enoch (Isaiah 18:1-7 :14) the angel shows the prophet "a prison for the stars of heaven, and for the host of heaven," and in the next verse it is explained that "the stars that roll over the fire are they who have transgressed the command of God before their rising, because they did not come forth in their time." It is possible that Jude had this in mind here, as the language of earlier chapters of the same book may have suggested others of Jude's figures. If the "wandering stars" are to be identified with any particular order of the heavenly bodies, it will be with the comets rather than the planets, the movements of the former seeming, to the common eye, so much the more erratic. The doom which is declared to be in reserve, no doubt takes its form so far from the immediate figure of the comet vanishing into the unseen. But the idea expressed is not so much that of suddenness as that of certainty and irreversibility. It is the doom which Christ himself pronounces to be prepared (Matthew 25:41), and, therefore, inevitable and perpetual. In confirmation of this statement of the certainty of the doom, the readers are next reminded of the Lord's judicial coming, and of that as the subject of prophecy. The prophecy in question, though not one of those recorded in the canonical Hebrew Scriptures, seems to have been familiar enough to the readers to make it a natural and pertinent thing to quote it. So Paul cites heathen authors or common popular sayings in support of his statements.
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these. The Revisers render it, and to these also Enoch … prophesied. In the apocryphal writing from which the passage is taken Enoch is styled, as here, "the seventh from Adam." Seven occurs in Scripture as a sacred symbolical number. Its introduction here, therefore, is very generally understood to claim a peculiar authority and finality for the prophecy emitted by Enoch. But it may be intended simply to mark the high antiquity of the prophecy, and its connection with the man who was distinguished from others of the same name mentioned in the oldest Scriptures (Genesis 4:17; Genesis 25:4; Genesis 46:9) by his exceptional nearness to God. Saying, Behold the Lord cometh (literally, came) with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince (that is, to convict) all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches (or, with the Revised Version, all the hard things) which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. The "ten thousands of his saints" is better rendered "ten thousands of his holy ones," or, as the Revised Version gives it in the margin, "his holy myriads." For the "holy ones" here intended are the angels. The mention of this retinue of Jehovah is in accordance with the Hebrew idea which appears in such passages as Deuteronomy 33:2, Deuteronomy 33:3; Daniel 7:10; Zechariah 14:5 (where the better reading is, "and the holy ones with him"); and appears again in the New Testament (Matthew 25:31; 2 Thessalonians 1:7, etc.). The clause, "among them," which might limit the ungodly to those in Israel, is omitted by the best authorities. The epithet "hard," which is applied to the "speeches," means hard in the sense of "harsh," not in the sense of "difficult to understand." It is the "churlish" which is applied to Nabal (1 Samuel 25:3). In the original the whole emphasis of the sentence is on the "ungodly sinners," which words are thrown forward to the close, thus: "all the hard things which they uttered against him—these impious sinners!" Near the beginning of that remarkable specimen of ancient apocalyptic literature, the Book of Enoch (Zechariah 1:9), we find these words, "And behold, he comes with myriads of the holy, to pass judgment upon them, and will destroy the impious, and will call to account all flesh for everything the sinners and the impious have done and committed against him" (Schodde's rendering). This is the passage which Jude quotes. He does so, however, with some modification; for the original, as we now have it, does not contain any reference to the "hard speeches" of the men of impiety. The book itself has had a singular history. Some acquaintance with it is discovered as early as the 'Epistle of Barnabas,' the 'Book of Jubilees,' and the 'Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.' It was freely used by the Fathers of the first five centuries. Though never formally recognized as canonical, it was in great esteem, largely accepted as a record of revelations, and regarded as the work of Enoch. It disappeared after Augustine's time, the only traces of its existence being some references to it in the writings of Syncellus and Nicephorus. From this time it was entirely lost sight of till rather more than a century ago, when the Abyssinian Church was discovered to possess an Ethiopic version of it. The well-known traveler, Bruce, obtained three copies of this version in 1773, and in 1821 an English translation was published by Archbishop Laurence. This was followed by a German translation by Hoffmann in 1833. The Ethiopic text itself was first issued by Archbishop Laurence in 1838, and afterwards in most scholarly fashion by Dillmann, in 1851, who also published a new German translation with important emendations in 1853. Since then much attention has been paid to the book. Within the last few years a corrected edition of Laurence's English translation has been published by the author of the 'Evolution of Christianity'; while another edition, with an English translation and important explanatory matter, has been issued by Professor Schodde of Ohio. An attempt has been made by some to bring the composition of the book down to Christian times, so that Enoch should quote Jude, not Jude Enoch. But there is every reason to believe that it belongs to the second century B.C. Certain portions of the book, however, are of later date. For it is scarcely possible to deny that it is the work of more than one hand. The original seems to have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic. We cannot be far astray, therefore, in accepting it as the composition of a Jew of Palestine dating between B.C. 166 and 110. It professes to give a series of revelations or visions received by Enoch, in which the fall of the angels, the punishment of unrighteous men, the reward of the godly, the coming of Messiah, the mystery of the world-weeks, and the secrets of the kingdom of nature, as well as those of the kingdom of grace, are shown him. That such a book should have been ascribed to Enoch is not strange. It was suggested by the account which is given of him in Genesis 5:21-24. "The statements there left ample room," as Dr. Schodde well remarks, "for a vivid imagination to supply unwritten history, while antiquity and piety made Enoch a welcome name to give force and authority to a book, and the 'walking with God' of Enoch, and his translation to heaven, which correct exegesis has always read in this passage, founded his claim of having enjoyed close communion with God and having possessed superhuman knowledge."