Jude 11 Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
Jude lifts three Biblical examples of rebellion and its consequent ruin, likening the false teachers to them. He prefaces this series of examples with a simple, “woe to them!” Woe is a word that indicates great sorrow. We search and find an excellent example of the usage of this word in Scripture if we turn our attention to Revelation.
Jude 10 But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves.
These false teachers speak evil of anything they are ignorant of, Jude explains. They speak from the deep well of their great ignorance, as the saying goes. We are all guilty of this on occasion, and it is a very dangerous pastime to cultivate.
Jude 9 Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
This verse in Jude seems to be a direct reference to a pseudepigraphical book, the Testament of Moses, or the Assumption of Moses. Found only in fragmentary form, the writer appears to have recorded the story of what is here being described. Mind you, this is not a tacit or direct endorsement of extra-biblical or non-canonical works; read such material with a grain of salt since we know the Holy Spirit did not include them in the canon of Scripture for a reason, whatever that may be.
Jude 8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.
In verses 5 through 7, Jude stirs up reminders for the congregation he’s writing to, warning them not only of the false teachers in their midst, but of the consequences of those who rebelled in former times and suffered the consequences for it. Now, in verse 8, Jude reaches something of a summary of the prior three verses.
Jude 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
In verse 7 Jude offers the third and final example from Scripture to liken to the false teachers infiltrating the church. Interestingly, this verse is closely linked to the previous, and Jude uses the inordinate behavior of the Sodomites to further detail the conduct of the angels in Noah’s time in order to clarify his present point.
