Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

In Jude 14-16, the author continues the theme of the judgment of his opponents, the false teachers.

In this instance, Jude cites the book of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9) specifically to make his case.

In this episode, we discuss the implications of Jude’s citation of 1 Enoch and the Old Testament sources from which the verse in 1 Enoch derive.

So Jude, no surprise, is still after the false teachers.

That’s basically what the whole book is about, and at this time he is going to loop Enoch in.

Now up until this point we’ve had Jude illustrate or analogize the false teachers to a number of things in the Old Testament known for their villainy: the Genesis 6 incident with the angels that sinned, we’ve had Cain, we’ve had Korah, we’ve had Balaam… Again, a whole series of Old Testament… I want to say “bad guys,” but just really unfavorable things that happened in the Old Testament that were judged by God harshly, and that is his point.

Again, that is why he is using these analogies.

Sodom and Gomorrah was the other one I left off that list.

Again, this is the point: Jude is saying the false teachers that he is writing against (that apparently there has been some struggle with) are like these, and then he will point to these Old Testament examples in terms of not only their wickedness, but more often than not the way they were judged.

And there is no exception here, except this time it is going to be a little bit different.

Look at that first line in Jude 14:

And then there’s a quotation.

Well, if you go back and look at the Old Testament, there is no such quotation from Enoch because that’s not what Jude is citing.

He is citing the book of Enoch here in verse 14—in Jude 14.

So we’ll get into that in a moment.

But Enoch, of course, was considered a prophet.

A prophet is just simply someone who speaks for God.

And so the Biblical Enoch had this reputation because he was specially favored by God even though he doesn’t do any prophesying in the Old Testament.

I mean, he’s only in the Old Testament in Genesis 5:18, 5:21-24

This is not the Enoch of Genesis 4. This is the Enoch of Genesis 5, the one who was taken that never died—he was “translated.”

I think how the King James renders it is “transported again to the heavenly realms,” so on and so forth, but there’s no recorded death.

He is just taken to heaven.

He is a righteous man, and because of that he gets this reputation as being somebody special in the Old Testament.

He is the seventh from Adam that follows the genealogy of Genesis 5:1-24.

And that same order is sort of spelled out where Enoch is the seventh from Adam (you can find that in 1 Enoch 37:1 or 1 Chronicles 1:1-[1]or also in Luke 3:37-38).

So he is the seventh from Adam.

That phrase though (the seventh from Adam) comes from the book of Enoch itself.

It uses it in chapter 60:8, chapter 93:3.

Jubilees 7:39 refers to Enoch as the seventh in his generation.

So this designation, as far as the wording goes, also comes from the book of Enoch, but that isn’t the quotation part.

The quotation part is the Lord coming with ten thousands of holy ones, so on and so forth.

And again, we’ll get there in a second.

The Seventh

Green in his Jude commentary writes this about the seventh position because, again, that is sort of a biblical number and it has some special meaning.

He writes:

The “seventh” position held particular significance for the Semitic mind (God rested on the seventh day—Gen.

2:2–3; the ark came to rest in the seventh month—Gen.

8:4; the Israelites ate unleavened bread seven days—Exod.

12:15– 16; there was of course rest every seventh day—Exod.

20:10–11; [there was a] seventh generation [that was talked about in Second Temple Judaism, specifically the]—Apoc.

Ab. 32.1 and Let.

Jer. 3 [that had special significance in Judaism], the fever left at the seventh hour—John 4:52; the seventh seal—Rev.

8:1; the seventh angel—Rev.

10:7) [ things are in 7s is the point].

Sometimes genealogies were even restructured to highlight the importance of a prominent person [ so that would be number 7] (see Sasson 1978 and his article in IDBSup355).

Identifying Enoch in this manner highlights the significance of the following words: no less than the seventh from Adam spoke against these heretics.

That is the end of Green’s quote and that’s what he wants to get to.

The fact that Enoch was the seventh from Adam is a position held in special regard.

And so even this one—"even the seventh from Adam”—would have had something negative to say about the false teachers.

So this is the mood that the wording seeks to conjure up.

Then Jude proceeds to cite the book of Enoch.

And this is the famous (or infamous) place where he does that.

He cites 1 Enoch 1:9 directly here and he cites basically the entire verse in Greek (the Greek Enoch—Greek version of 1 Enoch).

So I’m going to read 1 Enoch 1:9 in its own context.

This comes from Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigraphal Volume.

So this is basically how the book of Enoch opens.

I’m going to start in verse 3:

and all that is upon the earth shall perish.

And there shall be a judgment upon all, (including) the righteous.

8 And to all the righteous he will grant peace.

He will preserve the elect, and kindness shall be upon them.

They shall all belong to God and they shall prosper and be blessed; and the light of God shall shine unto them.

9Behold, he will arrive with ten million of the holy ones in order to execute judgment upon all.

He will destroy the wicked ones and censure all flesh on account of everything that they have done, that which the sinners and the wicked ones committed against him.”

So this is an apocalyptic vision. 1 Enoch is an apocalyptic book.

It’s kind of like the book of Revelation, which we mentioned before.

But of course, in Enoch’s case, Enoch is interpreting and affirming the apocalyptic vision of the Old Testament prophets just like John did in the book of Revelation.

And we spent a whole lot of time going through the book of Revelation and how it references the Old Testament.

Enoch does more of the same, talking about the end of the world as we know it.

He is interpreting and affirming the apocalyptic vision of the Old Testament prophets.

There is nothing in what I read there that you wouldn’t also find in the Old Testament.

And so we have in verse 14:

This is a vision of judgment.

Scholars have drawn attention to the way Jude cites 1 Enoch here.

Those of you who are into the book of Enoch, you probably have heard of this before, but scholars have been taken by the fact that Jude uses formulaic language in this passage that is found in other New Testament books for the way Old Testament prophets get cited.

In other words, Jude cites Enoch

like other New Testament writers would cite scripture.

In this case, we have the word “prophesied” in the declaration that someone prophesied.

So verse 14 was also about “these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying…” and then here comes the quote.

That’s typical language elsewhere in the New Testament for quoting parts of the Old Testament.

In Matthew 11:13… Let’s just look up a few here.

Matthew 11:13 says this:

Again, so there’s this word of prophecy.

Let’s look at another one here.

Matthew 15:7:

And then here comes the quote.

We’ll do one more here.

Let’s see, Mark 7:6

So it’s a way of setting up a quotation, and scholars have noticed that what Jude does here with 1 Enoch sounds a lot like what other new Testament writers do for parts of the Old Testament.

And so this has raised the question of Enoch’s status.

Was he not considered sort of on equal footing with some of this other material from the Old Testament?

Green has some thoughts to interject there that I want to read to you as well.

He writes here about the work of J. Charles in 1991.

So it’s not the R.H. Charles that’s known for his Enoch studies.

It’s a different scholar.

Green writes:

J. Charles (1991a: 144) attempts to show that “prophesied” here may mean something more general than classifying 1 Enoch as a prophetic book: “And if, by way of illustration, a Cretan is to the apostle Paul a ‘prophet’ (Titus 1:12), then [ so the reasoning goes] Enoch, in Jude 14, can ‘prophesy.’

” However, in Titus 1:12 Paul calls Epimenides “their very own prophet.”

Jude, on the other hand, says “Enoch … prophesied” and places this “text” together with other authoritative “texts” (vv.