These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
Spots. So 2 Peter 2:13 [spiloi; here, spiladees (G4694), which, in secular writers, means rocks, namely, on which the Christian love-feasts were in danger of shipwreck]. A B C read х hoi (G3588)] emphatically, 'THE rocks.' The reference to "clouds ... winds ... waves," accords with rocks. Vulgate, misled by the similar word, translates, "spots." Compare, however, Jude 1:23, which favours the English version. A C, to make Jude say the same as Peter, read, 'deceivings' х apatais (G539)] for 'love-feasts' х agapais (G26)]; but 'Aleph (') B, Vulgate, support 'love-feasts.' The love-feast accompanied the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:1-34, end). Korah the Levite, not satisfied with his ministry, aspired to the sacrificing priesthood also: so ministers in the Lord's Supper, seeking to make it a sacrifice, and themselves sacrificing priests, usurp the function of our only Christian sacerdotal Priest, Christ Jesus. Let them beware of Korah's doom!
Feeding themselves, х poimainontes (G4165)] - 'pasturing themselves.' What they look to is tending themselves, not the flock: they are 'pastors,' but it is to "themselves."
Without fear. Join, not as the English version, but with 'feast.' Sacred feasts especially ought to be celebrated with fear. Feasting is not faulty in itself (Bengel), but needs to be accompanied with fear of forgetting God, as Job (Jude 1:5) in his sons' feasts.
Clouds - from which one would expect refreshing rain; but "without water" (2 Peter 2:17): professors without practice.
Carried about. So Vulgate, probably from Ephesians 4:14; but 'Aleph (') A B C х paraferomenai (G3911)], 'carried aside;' i:e., out of the right course.
Trees whose fruit withereth, х fthinopoorina (G5352)] - 'trees of the late (waning) autumn,' namely, when there are no longer leaves or fruits on the trees (Bengel), etc.
Without fruit - without good fruit of knowledge and practice; sometimes what is positively bad.
Twice dead - first, when they cast their leaves in autumn, and seem during winter dead, but revive again in spring; secondly, when they are "plucked up by the roots." So these apostates, once dead in unbelief, then, in respect to profession, raised from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, but now having become dead again by apostasy, so hopelessly dead. A climax. Not only without leaves, like trees in late autumn, but without fruit; not only so, but dead twice; to crown all, "plucked up by the roots."