Jude 1:3-13

3 Beloved, using all diligence to write to you of our common salvation, I have been obliged to write to you exhorting [you] to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.
4 For certain men have got in unnoticed, they who of old were marked out beforehand [a] to this sentence, [b] ungodly [persons], turning the grace of our God into dissoluteness, and denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. [c]
5 But I would put you in remembrance, you who once knew all things, that the Lord, having saved a people out of [the] land of Egypt, in the second place destroyed those who had not believed.
6 And angels who had not kept their own original state, but had abandoned their own dwelling, he keeps [d] in eternal chains under gloomy darkness, to [the] judgment of [the] great day;
7 as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities around them, committing greedily fornication, in like manner with them, and going after other flesh, lie there as an example, undergoing the judgment of eternal fire.
8 Yet in like manner these dreamers also defile [the] flesh, and despise lordship, and speak railingly against dignities.
9 But Michael the archangel, when disputing with the devil he reasoned about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a railing judgment against [him], but said, [The] Lord rebuke thee.
10 But these, whatever things they know not, they speak railingly against; but what even, as the irrational animals, they understand by mere nature, in these things they corrupt themselves. [e]
11 Woe to them! because they have gone in the way of Cain, and given themselves up to the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.
12 These are spots [f] in your love-feasts, feasting together [with you] without fear, pasturing themselves; clouds without water, carried along by [the] winds; autumnal [g] trees, without fruit, twice dead, rooted up;
13 raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shames; [h] wandering stars, to whom has been reserved the gloom of darkness for eternity.

Footnotes 8

  • [a]. The article is used here with the perfect participle. The word signifies to appoint by notice beforehand, to fix by proclamation. They are the ones who of old were so noticed and marked out.
  • [b]. Krima: not the act of condemnation, but the subject-matter on which they are condemned: see Note, 1Cor. 11.29.
  • [c]. Or 'denying the only Master and our Lord Jesus Christ.' 'Master' is despotes: see Acts 4.24; 2Pet. 2.1.
  • [d]. The Greek perfect tense; signifying here the continuance of what had begun in the past.
  • [e]. Or 'destroy themselves,' 'perish.' See Note d, 1Cor. 3.17.
  • [f]. This word ordinarily means 'a rock,' and may allude to a sunken rock with the sea over it. This may be the meaning here.
  • [g]. Some take it for trees whose fruit withers as in autumn.
  • [h]. Not the shame they feel, but the things that are a shame to them. They do not feel it is so; as Phil. 3.19.
The Darby Translation is in the public domain.