5:6 Seek the Lord so you can live!
Otherwise he will break out 11 like fire against Joseph’s 12 family; 13
the fire 14 will consume
and no one will be able to quench it and save Bethel. 15
10:6 “I (says the Lord) will strengthen the kingdom 16 of Judah and deliver the people of Joseph 17 and will bring them back 18 because of my compassion for them. They will be as though I had never rejected them, for I am the Lord their God and therefore I will hear them.
1 tn Heb “portions.”
2 tn Heb “stand.”
3 tn Heb “the house.”
4 tn Grk “and save.”
5 tn Grk “and have mercy.”
6 tn Grk “with fear.” But as this contrasts with ἀφόβως (afobw") in v. 12 (without reverence), the posture of the false teachers, it most likely refers to reverence for God.
7 sn The imagery here suggests that the things close to the sinners are contaminated by them, presumably during the process of sinning.
8 tn Grk “hating even the tunic spotted by the flesh.” The “flesh” in this instance could refer to the body or to the sin nature. It makes little difference in one sense: Jude is thinking primarily of sexual sins, which are borne of the sin nature and manifest themselves in inappropriate deeds done with the body. At the same time, he is not saying that the body is intrinsically bad, a view held by the opponents of Christianity. Hence, it is best to see “flesh” as referring to the sin nature here and the language as metaphorical.
9 tn Grk “may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.”
10 tn The participles in v. 20 have been variously interpreted. Some treat them imperativally or as attendant circumstance to the imperative in v. 21 (“maintain”): “build yourselves up…pray.” But they do not follow the normal contours of either the imperatival or attendant circumstance participles, rendering this unlikely. A better option is to treat them as the means by which the readers are to maintain themselves in the love of God. This both makes eminently good sense and fits the structural patterns of instrumental participles elsewhere.
11 tn Heb “rush.” The verb depicts swift movement.
12 sn Here Joseph (= Ephraim and Manasseh), as the most prominent of the Israelite tribes, represents the entire northern kingdom.
13 tn Heb “house.”
14 tn Heb “it”; the referent (the fire mentioned in the previous line) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Heb “to/for Bethel.” The translation assumes that the preposition indicates advantage, “on behalf of.” Another option is to take the preposition as vocative, “O Bethel.”
16 tn Heb “the house.”
17 tn Or “the kingdom of Israel”; Heb “the house of Joseph.”
18 tc The anomalous MT reading וְחוֹשְׁבוֹתִים (vÿkhoshÿvotim) should probably be וַהֲשִׁי בוֹתִם (vahashi votim), the Hiphil perfect consecutive of שׁוּב (shuv), “return” (cf. Jer 12:15).