A Song of Ascents.
1I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
Where does my help come from?
2My help comes from Yahweh,
who made heaven and earth.
3He will not allow your foot to be moved.
He who keeps you will not slumber.
4Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5Yahweh is your keeper.
Yahweh is your shade on your right hand.
6The sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7Yahweh will keep you from all evil.
He will keep your soul.
8Yahweh will keep your going out and your coming in,
from this time forward, and forever more.
The brother of our Lord describes the problem of these believers with stumbling and not falling. As I wrote in another study Bible, "Jude does not use the word falling but stumbling. Only a person who is already walking or running (frequent biblical images of the Christian life) can stumble (see Gal 5:7; 1 Thess 4:1; Heb 12:1; 1 John 2:6 ). God is able to keep us from stumbling (see Ps 37:23, 24; 121:3; Prov 4:11, 12 ). He guards us in this life, despite all the dangers and pitfalls that deceivers put in our way."1
After he had carefully set forth the pride, trickery, and evil of these teachers, Jude ended his letter with glorious praise for our God and Savior. Only by ignoring these false teachers and turning to the teaching of the apostles would this group of Christians be rescued from those who have entrapped them in false teaching regarding the grace of God and a life of sensuousness.
Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, and H. Wayne House, The Nelson Study Bible, p. 2160. ↩︎