4. Three Biblical Warnings (v5-8)
As a warning against giving any kind of
encouragement to the evil men just denounced, Jude now proceeds to list Old
Testament examples of God's judgement on those who in time past behaved in a
similar wilful fashion.
His introductory phrase reads strangely: "though
ye know this once for all". Why not "these", since he is about to cite three
examples? And "once for all" comes in so unnaturally as to provoke the
speculation that an ellipsis is intended: 'though you know this, I make the
point once for all', as who should say: 'If this exhortation does not register
in your minds as serious, needful and right, I have nothing more to
add'.
For "this", not a few manuscripts read "all
things", meaning in this context 'all the examples I am about to
cite'.
Nevertheless 'I am set on reminding you' about
them. (In the New Testament this Greek verb 'to be set on' more often has the
flavour 'decide' than 'desire': R.V.) The apostle Peter, with his own bitter
experience rarely out of mind (Mark 14:72), is most urgent to remind his readers
of the important truths associated with their faith (2 Pet. 1:12,13,15; 3:1,2;
cp. also Rom. 15:15).
Jude's reminders are of three signal examples of
divine judgement on wilful sinners:
- Israel in the wilderness (v. 5),
- The
apostate "angels" (v. 6),
- Sodom and Gomorrah (v.
7).
It may be that the first of these is a follow-on
from a reminiscence (v. 4) of how in the wilderness Israel's sin regarding the
golden calf turned the grace of God into lasciviousness.
But now (v. 5) the emphasis is different: "The
Lord, having saved the people (of Israel) out of Egypt, a second time destroyed
them that believed not." A year after leaving Egypt Israel came to the borders
of the Land of Promise, but there, because they faithlessly accepted the
discouragements of the ten spies instead of the inspiring confidence of the two,
they were turned back into the wilderness, and that generation perished there.
Inheritance came forty years later.
That unexpected phrase "a second time" seems to
refer to the fact that when Israel came to the shores of the Red Sea, then (even
after seeing all God's signs in Egypt!) they seemed incapable of faith, but
murmured against Moses and against the Lord (Exod. 14:10-12). Nevertheless, even
in spite of this unworthy reaction, they were delivered. But when they came to
the borders of Canaan and showed a like (or worse) lack of faith -- "a second
time" -- now their doom was pronounced (Num. 14:32,33).
It may be that this, not mentioned in 2 Peter 2,
is brought in here to hint at a more specific warning to the "ungodly men" who
had "crept in privily" to undermine the faith in a prophet like unto Moses.
Forty years after the Passover deliverance the unbelievers were all dead. Then
what would come upon these others forty years after the sacrifice of the Lamb of
God?
In their discussion of the next example, the
commentaries make a vague, bewildering, unsatisfactory mess of things. Who were
these "angels which kept not their first estate"? Either there is an imaginative
attempt to harness the denunciation of Genesis 6:2 of the "sons of God" who
intermarried with the "daughters of men" and so brought judgement on the world,
or else a link is suggested with the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which refers to
rebellious angels in chains: 'Bind them for seventy years under the earth until
the Day of Judgement'. (Observe the inconsistency of orthodoxy regarding fallen
angels. Here they are kept shut up until the Day of Judgement. In 1 Peter 5:8 at
least one of them is at large "as a roaring lion" -- whose roar nobody has ever
heard!)
The first of these 'explanations' starts on the
wrong foot by making a wrong identification of 'the sons of God'. And in Genesis
6 there is no hint of these sinners being kept in chains and in
darkness.
The second creates vast problems by having
angelic beings who are given to rebellion against the Almighty (there is no sign
of this impossible concept anywhere else in the Bible), and there is also the
difficulty as to why such beings should be kept shut up under the
earth.
Also, regarding both explanations, there is the
question of relevance to the situation Jude was seeking to cope
with.
On the other hand, identification with the
rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Num. 16) appears to satisfy every phrase
that is used:
- The first word of verse 6 -- "and" -- provides a hint, for
this is not the usual Greek word kai, but the less frequent te, which is
commonly employed to link together items which go naturally together -- as 'man
and wife', 'buttercups and daisies', 'fish and chips'. Thus the use of te at the
beginning of verse 6 points to a definite link with Israel in the wilderness (v.
5).
- They "kept not their first estate" -- R.V. "their
own principality" -- fits Korah and his fellow-conspirators perfectly, for they
were all princes in Israel (Num. 16:1,2).
- They "left
their own habitation" -- the divinely appointed tabernacle -- in order to set up
a centre of worship of their own devising (Num.
16:24,27).
- "Kept in everlasting chains under darkness"
is supplemented in 2 Peter 2:4 with "cast them down to Tartarus". This is as apt
a description as could be of the fate of Korah -- the earth opened, and he and
his conspirators plunged into the bowels of the earth. (It is fairly obvious
that "chains of darkness" in Peter should really be as R.V.: "pits -- or caves
-- of darkness". There is only one letter difference in the Greek reading, and
good manuscript support for it.)
Other details worth noting are
these:
- The effective use of "kept" --
they kept not their own principality, so they are kept in darkness till the Day
of Judgement.
- For "everlasting" Jude seems deliberately
to have chosen a word almost identical with 'Hades', matching 'Tartarus' in
Peter.
- "The judgement of the great day" uses the same
phrase as in Revelation 6:17; "The great day of his wrath is come, and who shall
be able to stand?"
The third Biblical example is more
straightforward, and yet in a way more startling -- that Jews in the Faith
should be compared to men of Sodom. Yet Jude had a good precedent, for Jesus
made similar comparison when Jewish cities rejected his message (Matt. 11:23,24;
10:15). And if these infiltrators into the Faith, now being denounced by Jude,
used as one of their main tactics a "turning of the grace of God into
lasciviousness", there would be aptness enough in the parallel; hence the
phrase: "in like manner". Indeed, Jude sets it out bluntly enough: "giving
themselves over to fornication, and going after (Greek opiso) strange flesh",
i.e. sexual perversion (Gen. 19:5; the Greek verb, ekporneuo, seems to emphasise
this).
There is point also in the mention of "Sodom and
Gomorrah and the cities about them) (five in all), as intended to prepare Jewish
readers for the devastation of the entire Land. The parallel goes even further,
for just as angels came to rescue Lot and his family out of Sodom, so also Jesus
had warned his disciples: "When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies,
then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea
fell to the mountains...." (Luke 21:20,21).
Thus the cities of the plain are "beforehand set
forth" (Greek) as an example (a sample of wares laid out), "suffering the
vengeance of eternal fire". Not that the fire itself is eternal, but that it is
eternal in its consequences, as Peter's phrase implies: 'turning them to
ashes'.
Jude goes on to emphasise other features of this
grim parable: "Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, despise lordship
(singular), and blaspheme glories (plural)." All of these phrases link up easily
with the purple narrative of Genesis 19:
- "Defile the flesh" -- their
sodomy.
- "Despise lordship" -- their attitude to Lot who
"sat in the gate" and who "judged". (The Hebrew phrase in verse 9 is very
emphatic.)
- "Blaspheme glories" -- their attitude to the
angels.
- Is it possible that "dreamers" alludes to the
blindness inflicted on them? Or that those contemporaries that Jude wrote
against claimed to have Spirit-guided revelations: "your young men shall see
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams" (Acts
2:17)?