Jude 1:12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

These Ungodly teachers; are spots Blemishes; in your feasts of charity Or love-feasts, as αγαπαις is rendered by many interpreters. Commentators, however, are not agreed what sort of feasts they were. Some think they were those suppers which the first Christians ate previous to their eating the Lord's supper, of which St. Paul is supposed to have spoken 1 Corinthians 11:21; but which, in consequence of the abuse of them by persons of a character like those here described, were soon laid aside. Others think Jude is speaking of the ancient love-suppers, which Tertullian hath described, ( Apol., chap. 39,) and which do not seem to have been accompanied with the eucharist. These were continued in the church to the middle of the fourth century, when they were prohibited to be kept in the churches. Dr. Benson observes, “they were called love-feasts, or suppers, because the richer Christians brought in a variety of provisions to feed the poor, the fatherless, the widows, and strangers, and ate with them to show their love to them.” When they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear Abandoning themselves to gluttony and excess, without any fear of God, or jealousy over themselves, and so bringing a great reproach on the gospel, and the religion of Christ. Clouds without water Promising fertilizing showers of instruction and edification, but yielding none, or making a show of what they have not; see on 2 Peter 2:17; carried about of winds Of temptation hither and thither, without any command of themselves, into various sorts of wickedness. Trees without fruit The original expression, δενδρα φθινοπωρινα, is rendered by Macknight, withered autumnal trees; the latter word being derived from φθινοπωρον, which, according to Scapula, signifies, The decline of autumn drawing toward winter. Or, according to Phavorinus, it signifies a disease in trees which withers their fruit; a sense of the word which Beza has adopted in his translation. The translation of the Vulgate, arbores autumnales infructuoscæ, gives the same sense with that of Macknight, and suggests, he thinks, a beautiful idea. For, “in the eastern countries, the finest fruits being produced in autumn, by calling the corrupt teachers autumnal trees, Jude intimated the just expectation which was entertained of their being fruitful in good doctrine: but by adding ακαρπα, without fruit, he marked their uselessness, and the disappointment of their disciples.” Twice dead First in the stock, and afterward in the graft; first by nature, and afterward by apostacy. Or dead under the Mosaic dispensation, (those ungodly teachers being mostly of the Jewish nation,) and though at first apparently quickened on their reception of the gospel, yet, through the abuse of its doctrines and privileges, dead and barren a second time: plucked up by the roots As hopeless and irrecoverable. “There is a striking climax in this description of the false teachers: they were trees stripped of their leaves, and withering; they had no fruit, being barren that season: they were twice dead, having borne no fruit formerly: lastly, they were rooted out, as utterly barren.”