Having set in the forefront of his warnings these terrible instances of gross sin and overwhelming penalty, the writer proceeds to deal with the real character of the insidious troublers and corrupters of the Churches of his time.
He describes them as filthy dreamers; or better, as the Revised Version puts it, men in their dreamings—an expression pointing to the foul and perverted fancies in the service of which they lived. He charges them with the particular sins of defiling the flesh, despising dominion, and railing at dignities.
He further declares of them that, in practicing such sins, they run a course like that of the cities of the plain, and run it in defiance, too, of the warning held forth to them by the case of Sodom and Gomorrah.
For such seems the point of the terms connecting this paragraph with the preceding, which are best rendered "nevertheless in like manner," or "yet in like manner" (Revised Version). The difficulty lies, however, in the description of their offences.
What is intended by the charge that they defile the flesh is obvious. But what is referred to in the other clauses, and set at naught dominion (or, lordship), and rail at dignities (or, glories), is far from clear.
It has been supposed that a lawlessness is meant which expressed itself in contempt for all earthly authority, whether political or ecclesiastical. The whole scope of the passage, however, and the analogy of 2 Peter 2:10, etc.
, seem to point so decidedly to higher dignities than the earthly institutions of Church and State, that most interpreters now think that celestial lordship of some kind is in view. But of what kind?
That of God and that of good angels, say some. That of Christ and that of angels, say others. Both clauses, say a third class of interpreters, refer to angels, both to good angels and to evil, or to good angels alone, or to evil angels alone, as the allusions are variously understood.
Pointing to the particular word which is used here for "dominion" or "lordship," some contend that there is a definite reference to the dominion of Christ, the Lord distinctively so called. But the same word is used elsewhere (cf.
Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 1:16) of angels, while the term translated "dignities," or "glories," occurs again only in 2 Peter 2:10. If, therefore, any single kind of lordship is in view, we should conclude in favour of angelic dignities, and the authority of good angels in particular.
But it may be that Jude uses the terms here in a general sense to cover all kinds of authority, especially celestial authority. This is favoured by the undefined expressions which meet us in the Petrine parallel (2 Peter 2:10, etc.
). It is supported, too, by the consideration that in leveling three separate charges against the men, Jude has probably in view the three separate cases which he has just cited in Jude 1:5-7. In which case the parallel between these latter and the men now described can naturally be only of a general kind.
It is remarked by Professor Plumptre that the passage in 2 Peter 2:10, etc. (see his Commentary), taken in connection with this one in Jude, suggests that "the undue worshipping of angels in the Judaizing Gnosticism which had developed out of the teaching of the Essenes (Colossians 2:18), had been met by its most extreme opponents with coarse and railing mockery as to all angels, whether good or evil, and that the apostle felt it necessary to rebuke this license of speech as well as that which paid no respect to human authority."