THE author of this Epistle is generally supposed to be the apostle called "Judas, the brother of James in Luke 6:16, and "Lebbeus, whose surname was Thaddeus," in Matt 10:3. The design of the Epistle is, like that of the Second Epistle of Peter, to expose and condemn certain false and corrupt religious teachers, who had, even in those early times, found their way into the church, and whose influence threatened to be of the most dangerous character. A very striking characteristic of the Epistle is its siniilarity, not only in sentiment, but in imagery and diction, to the Epistle of Peter, above referred to--a similarity so close, as necessarily seems to imply some sort of connection or community of origin between the Epistles.

      3. Once; formerly; or, it may be, once for all, meaning that the revelation thus made is permanent, not to be changed for any new system yet to come.

      4. Before of old ordained to this condemnation. Nothing in the Scriptures of the New Testament is more remarkable than the readiness with which the minds of the inspired founders of Christianity, when speaking of the most extreme and aggravated of human sins, or of the deepest injuries inflicted upon the cause of Christ, by human instrumentality, at once recur to the thought of the all-controlling superintendence of God, which they represent as including and covering all human events and transactions whatsoever. Jesus speaking of his betrayal by Judas, (Mark 14:21,) the disciples describing the crucifixion of the Savior, (Acts 4:28,) and now Jude called to testify against the most alarming indications of an internal corruption in the church, are very striking instances. While they fully appreciated the enormity of these [547] sins, they never admitted the idea that any human guilt could be an unlooked-for contingency, interfering with and thwarting unexpectedly the divine designs,--or that any sinner, in his greatest excesses of crime, could really have broken away from the control of that hand by which they regarded the whole moral world as invariably and every where governed.

      6. Compare 2 Pet. 2:4.

      7. And the cities about them; Admah and Zeboim are named in Deut. 29:23.--Going after strange flesh; abandoning themselves to unnatural and enormous sins.

      8. These filthy dreamers; the corrupt teachers who are referred to v. 4.

      9. As there are no accounts in the books of the Old Testament to which the allusions in this verse can be supposed to relate, it is thought by many that the writer refers in them to traditional accounts which came down to his times; or else to writings which then existed, but have since been lost. In respect to the body of Moses, see Deut. 34:6.

      11. The gainsaying; the sedition.--Core; Korah. (Num. 16:)

      14. Enoch. There is no prophecy of Enoch extant in the Old Testament,--nor is any thing certain known of the writing ere referred to. There [548] is a book purporting to be the Book of Enoch, but it is generally considered spurious.

      22. Have compassion; treat them gently and tenderly.

      23. With fear; with the utmost urgency.--The garment spotted by the flesh; the least touch or contamination of evil. [549]

[AINT 547-459]