Jude 1 — Greek text and reception
Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.
Chapter 1
Contending for the faith and keeping in God’s love
Greeting
Verse 1:1
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Doulos is the writer’s religious self-designation, rendered servant. Beloved follows ēgapēmenois; the dative after kept permits for/by Jesus Christ. James is explicitly the brother; further identifications belong to reception. Reception: Origen, Commentary on Matthew X.17 [OR], quotes Jude’s self-description while discussing Jesus’ family. Clement [CL], opening on 1:1, interprets his self-designation as humility despite kinship. These are received identifications, not a resolution of authorship. Calvin on 1:1 [C1] instead privileges sanctified; his preference does not replace SBLGNT beloved.
Verse 1:2
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Mercy, peace, and love remain three coordinated gifts, with repeated and. Plēthyntheiē is an optative wish, represented by May … be multiplied. Reception: Calvin on 1:2 [C1] treats mercy as the source of grace and allows love to mean divine love or mutual Christian affection; his editor’s narrower view is not Calvin’s conclusion.
The urgent appeal
Verse 1:3
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Beloved, while making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write and urge you to contend for the faith delivered once for all to the saints.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The participial opening about our common salvation leads into the necessity of an urgent appeal. It does not itself prove that a separate earlier letter existed. Hapax marks the faith’s once-for-all delivery; saints means its holy recipients. Reception: Calvin on 1:3 [C2] reads the urgent appeal as pastoral preparation against threats and the delivered faith as something to retain with perseverance.
Verse 1:4
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For certain people have slipped in unnoticed, those written about long ago for this judgment: ungodly people who turn the grace of our God into shameless indulgence and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The single article links Master and Lord with Jesus Christ. Progegrammenoi means written about beforehand; the sentence does not name the writing. Grace is turned into aselgeia, shameless indulgence, and Christ is denied. Reception: Clement on 1:4 [CL] makes judgment follow impiety, rather than cause it. Calvin on 1:4 [C2] warns against using grace to license wrongdoing. Their theological explanations remain attributed.
Examples of judgment
Verse 1:5
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Now I wish to remind you, although you have come to know all this once for all, that Jesus, after saving a people from the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: SBLGNT expressly reads Jesus. Hapax modifies the readers’ knowing in this word order; once for all is retained, though once/already is possible here. Afterward represents to deuteron, the judgment subsequent to deliverance. No manuscript collation is claimed. Reception: Clement on 1:5 [CL] interprets the punishment as corrective; his English presentation says Lord God. Calvin on 1:5 [C3], citing Lord, uses the example against careless reliance on privilege. Neither quotation determines the selected Jesus reading.
Verse 1:6
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling, He has kept in everlasting chains under gloom for the judgment of the great day.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The angels failed to keep their domain and have been kept in chains: the repetition of tēreō matters. Archē can signify domain or original position. Jude names neither Tartarus nor the angels’ individual identities; compare, without harmonizing, 2 Peter 2:4. Reception: Calvin on 1:6 [C3] treats the angels’ fall as a warning from greater beings to lesser and interprets their chains as a miserable condition, with final punishment still awaited.
Verse 1:7
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, which practiced sexual immorality and went after other flesh in a manner like these, are set before us as an example, undergoing the penalty of eternal fire.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Other flesh retains sarkos heteras. Like these leaves the demonstrative’s debated antecedent visible: the angels or the people of Sodom and Gomorrah have been proposed. The cities’ sexual wrongdoing and the penalty of eternal fire are both explicit. Reception: Calvin on 1:7 [C3] relates like these to Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s inhabitants and understands their destruction as an image of final punishment. Clement’s abbreviated comment on 1:7 [CL] instead speaks of repentance through discipline. Neither reading silently settles Jude’s wording.
Verse 1:8
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Yet in the same way these people too, in their dreaming, defile flesh, reject dominion, and slander glorious ones.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Dreaming accompanies three distinct charges: flesh-defilement, rejection of dominion, and slander of glorious ones. Doxas is plural; the translation leaves their identity open. Compare the closely related wording of 2 Peter 2:10. Reception: Clement on 1:8 [CL] identifies the glorious ones as angels. Calvin on 1:8 [C4] applies the charge to hostility toward magistrates. This interpretive contrast explains why the translated noun stays open.
Verse 1:9
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
But Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous judgment against him, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Michael is named archangel; the dispute concerns Moses’ body. He refrains from a slanderous judgment and appeals to the Lord with an optative rebuke. Jude does not narrate the burial or name the written source of this episode. Reception: Clement on 1:9 [CL] associates the episode with Moses’ assumption. Calvin on 1:9 [C4] allows an inherited tradition and takes Michael’s restraint as a rebuke to abusive speech. Neither supplies a directly collated surviving Moses narrative here.
Verse 1:10
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
But these people slander whatever they do not know; and what they understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals, becomes the very thing by which they are corrupted.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The two knowledge clauses contrast what they do not know with what they understand by natural instinct. Their corruption is connected specifically with the latter. Unreasoning animals represents aloga zōa, also used in 2 Peter 2:12. Reception: Clement on 1:10 [CL] connects the animal comparison with appetite. Calvin on 1:10 [C4] distinguishes natural instinct from reason’s governance of desire.
The portrait of the intruders
Verse 1:11
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have poured themselves into Balaam’s error for pay, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Cain’s way, Balaam’s paid error, and Korah’s rebellion remain distinct examples. Have poured themselves preserves exechythēsan’s force; pay belongs to Balaam’s clause, without an amount. The aorists portray these courses and their ruin decisively. Reception: Calvin on 1:11 [C5] connects Balaam with corrupt teaching for gain and Korah with disruption of the Church’s peace. These are applications of the three named examples.
Verse 1:12
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
These are reefs at your love feasts, feasting together with you, shepherding themselves without fear; waterless clouds carried along by winds; late-autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted;
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Reefs renders spilades; spots/blemishes is a traditional alternative. Love feasts translates agapai, unlike the deceptions of selected 2 Peter 2:13. Without fear can attach to the feasting or self-shepherding. Waterless clouds and fruitless, twice-dead, uprooted trees remain distinct images. Reception: Clement on 1:12 [CL] reads the dry clouds as lacking fruitful divine teaching. Calvin on 1:12 [C5] treats love feasts as signs of fellowship and the barren images as empty promise.
Verse 1:13
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
wild waves of the sea foaming up their own shames; wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept forever.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The images continue from verse twelve. Shames is plural; wandering stars and the gloom of darkness must not be flattened into a general label for wickedness. Has been kept preserves the perfect and the letter’s recurring reservation motif. Reception: Calvin on 1:13 [C5] applies the waves to inflated speech and the stars to deceptive brilliance. His comparison with contemporary opponents is later polemical application.
Verse 1:14
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these people, saying, “Look, the Lord came with His holy myriads,
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Enoch is explicitly seventh from Adam. The aorist came remains in the quoted prophecy, whose judgment is future in its literary setting. Holy myriads preserves the vast company without inserting an exact census or a list of beings. No independent Enoch manuscript was collated. Reception: Augustine, City of God XV.23 [AU], accepts Jude’s witness to Enoch while questioning writings circulating under Enoch’s name. Jerome, On Illustrious Men 4 [JE], reports objections to the quotation and Jude’s authority through age and use. Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress I, §§89, 395 [BU], reuses the Lord’s accompanying heavenly company in composite judgment scenes; their other imagery is not all from Jude.
Verse 1:15
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
to execute judgment against all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all their ungodly works that they committed in ungodliness, and concerning all the harsh things that ungodly sinners spoke against Him.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Two infinitives state the coming’s purpose: execute judgment and convict. The repeated all and ungodly word-family deliberately accumulate the charge against deeds and speech. Against Him refers to the Lord of the quotation, which ends here. Reception: Calvin, on 1:14–15 within Jude 14–16 [C6], treats judgment of both deeds and defiant speech as a warning requiring vigilance. This is the passage’s exposition, not an independent commentary on each repeated ungodly term.
Text [G]: NA28 reads πᾶσαν ψυχήν, every soul, a reading carried by no other edition in TAGNT (SBLGNT πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς); the rendering above follows SBLGNT, and NA28 would read "to convict every soul concerning all their ungodly works".[G][C6]
Verse 1:16
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
These are grumblers, faultfinders, walking according to their own desires; their mouth speaks boastful things, and they flatter people for the sake of advantage.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Grumblers and faultfinders are separate descriptions. Their mouth preserves the Greek singular with plural possessors. Flatter people expresses the idiom admiring faces, motivated expressly by advantage; their desires and boastful speech remain connected. Reception: Calvin on 1:16 [C6] highlights the inconsistency between arrogant boasting and servile flattery for gain.
Text [G]: NA28 reads reflexive ἑαυτῶν, carried by no other edition in TAGNT (SBLGNT αὐτῶν); the "their own" in the rendering above answers most directly to NA28's ἑαυτῶν, though it is also a possible emphatic rendering of SBLGNT's αὐτῶν, which reads plainly "their desires".[G][C6]
Remember, pray, and show mercy
Verse 1:17
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
But you, beloved, remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The emphatic plural you turns to the beloved recipients. Remember is an imperative, and the remembered words belong to the apostles of Jesus Christ. No apostle or specific written letter is named here. Reception: Calvin, on 1:17–18 within Jude 17–19 [C7], joins the apostolic warning to Enoch’s older prophecy to steady the hearers against predicted corruption.
Verse 1:18
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
for they used to tell you, “In the last time there will be mockers, walking according to their own ungodly desires.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Used to tell represents the imperfect elegon; last time is singular. The mockers follow their own ungodly desires. Compare 2 Peter 3:3, whose wording is last days and must remain distinct. Reception: In that same 1:17–18 exposition [C7], Calvin dates the last time from Christ’s first coming and describes scoffing as contempt for God and future judgment.
Verse 1:19
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
These are the ones who create divisions, people of merely natural life, not having the Spirit.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: SBLGNT has those creating divisions without the added themselves found in some earlier presentations. Psychikoi describes life unshaped by the Spirit, not a psychological diagnosis. The Spirit contrasts with the Holy Spirit explicitly named next. Reception: Calvin on 1:19 [C7] reads separation from Church discipline; editor John Owen’s note 201 argues for divisions within it. Calvin relates natural life to the absence of spiritual renewal. The editor’s judgment is separately attributed.
Verse 1:20
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
But you, beloved, building yourselves up upon your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Building and praying are participles leading into verse twenty-one’s command. Yourselves and your are plural: growth in the most holy faith is communal. Prayer is explicitly in the Holy Spirit. Reception: Calvin on 1:20 [C8] connects continuing growth in faith with love and prayer enabled by the Spirit.
Verse 1:21
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
keep yourselves in the love of God, awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Keep is the main imperative of verses twenty–twenty-one. Love of God leaves the genitive open to God’s love and love directed toward God. Awaiting Christ’s mercy points toward eternal life, not a second independent command. Reception: Calvin on 1:21 [C8] connects perseverance in love with hope grounded in Christ’s mercy.
Verse 1:22
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And have mercy on some who are doubting;
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: SBLGNT has mercy and the accusative diakrinomenous, construed here as those doubting. It is not the nominative making a distinction found in Calvin’s cited reading. This first group continues into the next verse’s two groups. Reception: Calvin on 1:22–23 [C8] advocates adapting correction to each person. His two-group wording and making a distinction differ from the selected text.
Verse 1:23
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
save others, snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on others with fear, hating even the tunic stained by the flesh.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The selected text separately directs rescue from fire and mercy with fear. Tunic retains chitōn; flesh-staining remains an image rather than an explanatory replacement. These three groups across verses twenty-two–twenty-three must not be collapsed into a different textual arrangement. Reception: Calvin on 1:23 [C8] applies the stained garment to avoiding occasions of vice. Clement on 1:23 [CL] spiritualizes it as inward pollution.
Doxology
Verse 1:24
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Now to Him who is able to guard you from stumbling and to make you stand blameless before His glory with exultation—
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: The dative recipient begins a doxology continued in verse twenty-five. Guarding against stumbling and presenting blameless are distinct infinitives; exultation qualifies that presentation. The selected object is you, not them. Reception: Calvin on 1:24–25 [C8] grounds human exhortation and rescue in God’s effective power.
Verse 1:25
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority before all time, and now, and into all the ages. Amen.
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G]: Only God our Savior receives the praise through Jesus Christ our Lord. Glory, majesty, might, and authority are all retained, as are before all time, now, and all the ages. SBLGNT does not add wise; the mediation and before-all-time clauses are explicit. Reception: See Calvin’s doxology exposition at 1:24–25 [C8], cited in the preceding note. His displayed biblical text adds wise and lacks two clauses retained here; this difference is reported from that presentation, not established by manuscript collation.