In a similar way that Peter described angels that sinned during the time of Noah, Jude takes it a step further and directly quotes from the Book of Enoch, while also mentioning ‘angels’ that didn’t remain in their proper place in the created order. This is consistent with how other turn-of-the-millennium Jews and Christians interpreted it as well.
Wayward Angels and Quoting Enoch
4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5 Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
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10 But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
11 Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
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13 wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones,
15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
Jude 4 – 15
Jude Quotes Enoch Twice
Some have argued that these verses can be explained as angels who were not the same as the sons of God of Genesis 6.
However, these explanations fail to address the fact that Jude, Peter and their readers were familiar with the Book of Enoch and the views of other historians and philosophers of their time on this topic – that the sons of God were angels.
The Book of Enoch is as old as 200 – 100 BC, predating Jude by at least 150 years and Jude intentionally uses the same terminology that the Book of Enoch uses to describe the sin of the angels.
See the comparisons below. It’s quite a stretch to insist that Jude and Peter were somehow unaware of the wording they were using…
| Genesis 6 | 1 Peter | 2 Peter | Jude | Enoch 1 | Josephus |
| When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, | And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. | Now this posterity of Seth continued to esteem God as the Lord of the universe, and to have an entire regard to virtue, for seven generations; but in process of time they were perverted, and forsook the practices of their forefathers… | |||
| the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. | For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, | And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling— | And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’ | For many angels of God accompanied with women, | |
| The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. | And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, | and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength; for the tradition is, that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants. | |||
| he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, | but cast them into hell [Greek: Tartarus] and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; | these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. | bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is for ever and ever is consummated. |
In Conclusion
The simple explanation is that like Peter, Jude took it for granted that the sons of God in Genesis 6 were indeed angels that had sinned and were punished severely for it.
So does this mean that Jude is asserting that the story in the Book of Enoch is how the events of Genesis 6 took place?
The short answer is no… And stay tuned for our long answer!
