Jude 3–11

Occasion of the Letter

³Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once and for all handed on to the saints.^{* 4}For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into debauchery and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.^e*

Judgment on False Teachers

⁵Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, once and for all, that Jesus, who saved^f a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.^{* 6}And the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day.^{* 7}Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust,^g serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.^*

⁸Yet in the same way these dreamers also defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander the glorious ones.^{h* 9}But when the archangel Michael disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, he did not dare to bring a condemnation of slanderⁱ against him but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”^{* 10}But these people slander whatever they do not understand, and they are destroyed by those things that, like irrational animals, they know by instinct. ¹¹Woe to them! For they go the way of Cain and abandon themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain and perish in Korah’s rebellion.^*