In the first
installment, I set out the traditional Greco-Roman letter format and looked
at the “Judases” and “Jameses” in the New Testament. In the second
installment, I weighed the arguments on authorship and decided the best
evidence points in the direction of the Judas/Jude who is the brother of
Jacob/James and Jesus. I then looked at what this means for the date of the
letter and the location, or place, in which the letter was written. In the third
installment, I examined the salutation, verses 1-2, in which I studied the letter
itself, the reasons the letter was sent, and the goals of the letter. In
the fourth installment I studied the “Reason for Writing” in verses 3-4, a
part of the letter typically called the “Thanksgiving,” but in Jude lacking
that element. In the
fifth entry, I studied the first three charges Jude makes against the
“intruders… who pervert the grace of
our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ”
(vv.3-4) in verses 5-7. In the sixth
entry, verses 8-10, I looked at how Jude applies the charges made against
the intruders. In this, the seventh entry, I look at further charges against
these intruders and “dreamers” taken from the Old Testament, and an actual
charge made regarding their behavior in the community.
6. The Letter of Jude:
To see the breakdown of a typical Greco-Roman letter, the
category into which Jude fits, please consult the
first entry in the commentary. Last entry, I wrote about the “Opening of the
Body of the Letter,” in which Jude announced the ways in which the intruders into
the Church have strayed by comparing current bad behavior to examples of
sinfulness from Scripture and the non-canonical 1 Enoch. In the next verses in
the Body of the Letter, Jude directly outlines the behaviors of which he claims
the intruders are guilty.
d) Body of the Letter:
Further Charges against the Intruders: verses 11-13
11
Woe to them! For they go the way of Cain, and abandon themselves to Balaam's
error for the sake of gain, and perish in Korah's rebellion. 12 These are
blemishes on your love-feasts, while they feast with you without
fear, feeding themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along
by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves
of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom
the deepest darkness has been reserved forever. (NRSV)
These verses continue the surge of charges made against the
group of people that Jude has designated as “intruders” and “dreamers.” Verse 11 begins with a “Woe” pronounced against
them, which William
Brosend, in an excellent section on these verses, compares to the “woes”
Jesus pronounces in the New Testament 29 times (176). Apart from these uses of
the word, it only appears once in 1 Cor 9:16 and 14
times in Revelation, Brosend says. I would want to add one more text into
this discussion, however, which will become more significant when we examine
verses 14-15. The text of 1 Enoch, already
alluded to in Jude, a Jewish apocalyptic text, has many more occurrences of
woes pronounced against evildoers at the end of time than the New Testament as
a whole. But when we combine Revelation and 1 Enoch
with Jesus’ own uses of “woes,” the vast majority of all of these occurrences
are pronounced on people in the context of the coming Judgment at the end of
time. This is Jude’s context too.
Their behaviors are placed in the context of notorious Old Testament
sinners, such as Cain, Balaam and Korah. Cain we know from the murder of his
brother Abel when his sacrifice, for unknown reasons, was not acceptable to God
(Genesis 4). I
suspect that “going the way of Cain” has more to do with his attitude towards
God and sin in general that Jude is rhetorically comparing to the intruders
rather than an actual charge of murder. J.N.D.
Kelly says that in Hellenistic Judaism Cain had become the model of “godlessness,
moral irresponsibility and ultimate damnation” (10-11). Once again, though, the actual charge is
vague.
This vagueness is the case with Balaam, too, who appears in Numbers 22-24 as
someone called by Balak son of Zippor King of Moab to curse the Israelites.
Instead, Balaam listens to God, and his talking donkey, and does not curse them, gaining
the ire of Balak. How is this an apt comparison for the intruders? The full
charge in Jude against the intruders is that they “abandon themselves to
Balaam's error for the sake of gain” (v.11) and this offers a clue. Both
Brosend and Kelly offer that the OT scenes in Numbers 22-24 paint Balaam in a
fairly positive light, but that Jewish tradition in the time of Jesus and
following saw Balaam as a figure that actually did give in to the desire for
money and cursed the Israelites for profit. Even more he was seen as the false
prophet whose advice to the Midianites caused the Israelites to commit idolatry.
Korah’s rebellion is easier to piece together, since it
appears clearly in Numbers
16 that Korah and two of his friends, Dathan and Abiram, challenged the leadership
of Moses and Aaron. They were swallowed up by the earth and sent straight to
She’ol along with
their families for defying God’s authority as established in Moses and Aaron. Jude uses a past tense (aorist) to describe what has
already happened to these intruders– “perished” (apôlonto) - though the English translates this as “perish.” While
this suggests that the condemnation of the intruders might already have taken place,
far more likely is that Jude writes in the past tense to stress that they have
already been judged by God; their fate is indeed a fait accompli.
It is now in v. 12 that we find a straightforward charge against
them, though, and that is that they are “blemishes on your love-feasts, while
they feast with you without fear, feeding themselves.” This English
translation, however, smooths over a
couple of issues. The “blemishes” in Greek is spilades,
which usually means “rocks” or “reefs” (as Reicke,
207). When translated as “blemishes” it is meant to indicate that these
intruders function as “immoral” reefs or perhaps “stumbling stones” at the “love-feasts.”
The love-feasts (agapê) are early
Christian meals which were held in conjunction with the Eucharist and a sign of
the unity, fellowship and love of the early Church. The intruders are present
at these meals “without fear,” which perhaps indicates that though they do not
belong, they are making themselves welcome. Included in this is that they are “shepherding
themselves,” the literal Greek for “feeding themselves, and this points to a
self-contained group, who see themselves as beyond the authority or discipline of
the Church. Whether they are not submitting to the authority of the Church or
simply making themselves present where they do not belong, they are taking care
of themselves and not a part of the broader Church community.
Jude then continues to pile up imagery, this time again
vague in terms of actual content of behavior, but vivid and evocative in terms
of imagery: “they are waterless clouds
carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted”
(v.12). For me, these images need not be
grounded in actual agricultural images from ancient Palestine, for instance,
but simply examples of their uselessness: a cloud without water, a tree without
fruit is like a lamp under a bushel. These things cannot produce what they
ought to produce, which in these cases ought to refresh and give sustenance.
The final verse in this section, verse 13, concentrates on
the chaotic nature of their behavior and beliefs, casting the intruders as “wild
waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame.” The final description,
however, casts them as truly chaotic, with the proper punishment for such
chaos. They are “wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been
reserved forever.” The word “stars” is
actually modified by the adjective planêtai,
which gives us a sense of what Jude is getting at even in transliteration.
Planets were “wandering stars” and “stars” and planets were often personified
as angels or holy ones (see Daniel 12:3), but
wandering stars could also refer to either fallen angels or to the fallen
angels who controlled them (see Kelly,
274). And this image takes us to the looming text of 1 Enoch, in this case 1
Enoch 18:13-16 and 21:1-10 in which the “watchers” or fallen angels are said to
be placed in the pit until the Judgment at the end of time.
The next verses will take us directly to the text of 1
Enoch.
John W. Martens
I invite you to follow
me on Twitter @Biblejunkies
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