Passage

Jude 7

Book: Jude · NASB95

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

5. Now I desire to put you in remembrance, though ye know all things once for all, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. 6. And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

7. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, having in like manner with these given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

Yet in like manner these also in their dreamings defile the flesh, and set at nought dominion, and rail at dignities. 9. But Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. (Jude 1:5-9, ASV)

WEB

5. Now I desire to remind you, though you already know this, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who didn’t believe. 6. Angels who didn’t keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

7. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, having, in the same way as these, given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are shown as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

Yet in the same way, these also in their dreaming defile the flesh, despise authority, and slander celestial beings. 9. But Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil and arguing about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him an abusive condemnation, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 1:5-9, WEB)

KJV

5. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. 6. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. ^{first estate: or, principality}

7. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. ^{strange: Gr. other}

Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. 9. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. (Jude 1:5-9, KJV)

YLT

5. and to remind you I intend, you knowing once this, that the Lord, a people out of the land of Egypt having saved, again those who did not believe did destroy; 6. messengers also, those who did not keep their own principality, but did leave their proper dwelling, to a judgment of a great day, in bonds everlasting, under darkness He hath kept,

7. as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, in like manner to these, having given themselves to whoredom, and gone after other flesh, have been set before, an example, of fire age-during, justice suffering.

In like manner, nevertheless, those dreaming also the flesh indeed do defile, and lordship they put away, and dignities they speak evil of, 9. yet Michael, the chief messenger, when, with the devil contending, he was disputing about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring up an evil-speaking judgment, but said, 'The Lord rebuke thee!' (Jude 1:5-9, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Jude, identifying himself as a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James
Audience: Believers facing teachers who had entered the community and turned grace into licence (v. 4)
Location: Unspecified; the letter is general rather than addressed to one city
Time period: First century, likely before AD 80; the relationship to 2 Peter 2 is disputed in both directions

The verse in its argument

Jude 5-7 is a sequence of three examples of judgment, delivered as a single unit, and the third one is this verse. The pattern is deliberate:

Israel in the wilderness (v. 5), a people saved out of Egypt and then destroyed for unbelief.
The angels (v. 6), who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling, now held in eternal chains.
Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 7), which in the same manner as these gave themselves over and went after strange flesh.

The linkage matters for interpretation. The phrase rendered "in like manner with these" ties Sodom's offence back to the angels of verse 6, not merely to the wilderness generation. Both cases involve a transgression of the boundary between kinds: angels leaving their proper domain, and the men of Sodom pursuing what the text calls other flesh.

The Greek phrase

Sarkos heteras, literally flesh of a different kind. Heteros means other in the sense of different in kind, as against allos, another of the same kind. The distinction is not absolute in Koine, and it should not be pressed as though it were a technical rule, but the choice of word is consistent with the boundary-crossing theme running through verses 6 and 7.

Two readings of what the different flesh refers to:

The Genesis 19 narrative as the men of Sodom encountered it, in which the objects of their intent were angels. On this reading the parallel with verse 6 is exact and reciprocal: angels sought what was not theirs in one direction, men in the other.
Sexual transgression against the created order more broadly, with the angelic element supplying the sharpest instance rather than the whole meaning.

The two are not exclusive, and the letter's own logic supports a boundary reading either way.

Theological reading

The offence is not reducible to inhospitality. A revisionist reading, associated with Derrick Sherwin Bailey and repeated widely since, holds that Sodom's sin was a failure of hospitality, appealing to Ezekiel 16:49, which names pride, excess of food and unconcern for the poor. Three observations bear on it. Ezekiel's next verse adds that they committed abomination before God, so the passage does not exclude the sexual element it is cited to exclude. Jude 7 names the offence with explicitly sexual vocabulary. And 2 Peter 2:6-8, whatever its literary relationship to Jude, describes Lot as tormented by the sensual conduct of the lawless. The hospitality reading identifies something genuinely present in the tradition and does not account for the way this verse states the charge.

Eternal fire is presented as an example, not merely as a past event. The phrase deigma, a specimen or exhibit, casts the destroyed cities as a displayed warning. Patristic and later readers noted that the smoking waste of the Dead Sea region functioned as a standing visual reminder in the geography itself, and Jude uses that quality rather than only the historical fact.

The letter's target is teachers inside the community. The three examples are aimed at people in verse 4 who had come in unnoticed. Each case in the sequence involves a party who had a place and forfeited it: a redeemed people, angels with a domain, cities within the land promised to Abraham's neighbours. The warning is about defection from a granted position rather than about outsiders.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Lexicon:

G0166 - aionios

Notes

This verse is deployed on both sides of contemporary sexual-ethics arguments and is frequently handled badly by both.

The overreach to avoid is treating it as a comprehensive statement of biblical sexual ethics. It is one verse in a judgment sequence, its central term is contested, and the fuller case rests on Genesis 1-2, Leviticus 18 and 20, Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Building the argument on the most contested proof text rather than on the clearest ones is a tactical error. See Biblical Sexual Ethics Objection Defeater.

The concession to avoid is granting that the passage is only about inhospitality. It is not, and the vocabulary of the verse settles that much even where the referent of sarkos heteras remains debated.

The strongest use of the verse is structural rather than lexical: it sits inside an argument about those who abandon an assigned place, and that theme, running through all three examples, is the letter's actual subject.

See Genesis 19 for the narrative and Angels for the verse 6 background.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

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Notes

Your annotations.

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.