1Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: 2May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
3Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. 4For there are certain men who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into indecency, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5Now I desire to remind you, though you already know this, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who didn’t believe. 6Angels who didn’t keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. 7Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having in the same way as these given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are shown as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. 8Yet in the same way, these also in their dreaming defile the flesh, despise authority, and slander celestial beings. 9But Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil and arguing about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him an abusive condemnation, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!” 10But these speak evil of whatever things they don’t know. They are destroyed in these things that they understand naturally, like the creatures without reason. 11Woe to them! For they went in the way of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire, and perished in Korah’s rebellion. 12These are hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds who without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; 13wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever. 14About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 16These are murmurers and complainers, walking after their lusts—and their mouth speaks proud things—showing respect of persons to gain advantage.
17But you, beloved, remember the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18They said to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts.” 19These are those who cause divisions and are sensual, not having the Spirit.
20But you, beloved, keep building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. 21Keep yourselves in God’s love, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. 22On some have compassion, making a distinction, 23and some save, snatching them out of the fire with fear, hating even the clothing stained by the flesh.
24Now to him who is able to keep them from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory in great joy, 25to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.
Jude’s quotation comes from the non-canonical book known as “The Book of Enoch,” a book that was compiled over a two-hundred-year period, completed immediately before the birth of Jesus. Although Jude quotes from it, the Book of Enoch is not considered canonical by a large majority of Christianity. Some traditions use it, though, and the most complete copy of the book was preserved in the Ge’ez language of the Ethiopian Church. Although it is supposedly the visions of Noah’s great-grandfather, Enoch was likely composed between 350 B.C. and the time of Christ. It purports to be Enoch’s prophetic visions concerning the apocalypse. Because of Enoch’s use of the phrase “Son of Man,” as well as its similarity to the book of Daniel, the work has been of great interest to scholars studying the Bible’s use of the term.
The oldest known copies of Enoch were found at Qumran’s cave four and date to between 30 B.C and A.D. 20. Epigraphic studies on the Qumran Enoch have found that they were written by the same scribe as several other Dead Sea Scrolls. These fragments of Enoch, written in Aramaic, cover about a fifth of the book.
The exact citation found in Jude is from Enoch 1:9. Enoch was a highly respected book by many early Christians and Jews of the era, including the community at Qumran, even though Jude does not call the book Scripture. Jude’s use of non-canonical writing in verses 14-15 does not mean that his writing is false or that he is mistaken, similar to the use of the Assumption of Moses in Jude 9. Rather, Jude was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and was recounting this event as true; consequently, we can be certain that it did happen. In fact, the theme of God destroying the ungodly is a common theme in the Bible (Ps 78:49; Isa 13:11; Joel 1-2). The judgment of which Enoch prophesied is yet to be fulfilled and relates to the second coming of Christ after the tribulation era (2 Thess. 1:7-10). Although the prophecy in Jude does not reveal any new information, it is a good summary of the certainty of the coming universal judgment by God.
The passage shows the man Jude’s great awareness of the culture in which he lived and the audience to whom he wrote. It also shows that when the Bible quotes other sources or speaks of events, it does so with accuracy and truth. A non-biblical source may contain truth, even if it is not inspired. Jude is not the only biblical author to quote or refer to non-biblical texts. For example, Paul quoted the Greek philosophers Cleanthes and Aratus in Acts 17:28, Meander in 1 Corinthians 15:33, and Epimenides in Titus 1:12.
Bibliography. Baez-Camargo, Gonzalo, Archaeological Commentary on the Bible (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1984), 260-61; Boccaccini, Gabriele, ed., Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 2007); Martinez, Florentini Garcia, Qumran and the Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 1992 ), 2; Nickelsburg, W.E., “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Dead Sea Scrolls Spotlight: The Book of Enoch,” Biblical Archaeology Review 33 (2007): 64-65, accessed April 12, 2010, http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=33&Issue=5&ArticleID=14.