Jude Chapter 1 verse 12 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 12, 13. - 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, 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 (chapter 18:14) 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.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(12-19) Three-fold description of the ungodly, corresponding to the three examples just given. The divisions are clearly marked, each section beginning with "These are" (Jude 1:12; Jude 1:16; Jude 1:19).(12-15) Description corresponding to Cain.(12) These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you.--Rather, These are the rocks in your feasts of charity, banqueting with you fearlessly (see next Note); or, These are they who banquet together fearlessly, rocks in your feasts of charity. The former is preferable. But in any case we must probably read rocks--i.e., that on which those who meet them at your love-feasts will be wrecked (see Notes on 1Corinthians 11:20-22)--not "spots," which is borrowed from 2Peter 2:13. But it is just possible that as spiloi, St. Peter's word, may mean either "spots" or "rocks" (though most commonly the former), so St. Jude's word (spilades) may mean either "spots" or "rocks" (though almost invariably the latter). In an Orphic poem of the fourth century, spilades means "spots "; but this is rather late authority for its use in the first century. Here "rocks" is the safer translation. St. Peter is dwelling on the sensuality of these sinners, and for him "spots" is the more obvious metaphor. St. Jude, in tracing an analogy between them and Cain, would be more likely to select "rocks." These libertines, like Cain, turned the ordinances of religion into selfishness and sin: both, like sunken rocks, destroyed those who unsuspectingly approached them. On the difference of reading respecting the word for "feasts of charity," or "love-feasts," see Note on 2Peter 2:13. Possibly the name Agapae for such feasts comes from this passage. Had it been common when St. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 11, he would probably have made a point of it; love-feasts in which there was no love. (Comp. 1Peter 5:14.) . . .