6:15 You will plant crops, but will not harvest them;
you will squeeze oil from the olives, 22 but you will have no oil to rub on your bodies; 23
you will squeeze juice from the grapes, but you will have no wine to drink. 24
1 tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).
2 tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.
3 tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.
4 tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.
5 tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).
6 tn Heb “increase of herds.”
7 tn Heb “growth of flocks.”
8 tn Grk “people.” However, if Jude is indeed arguing that Peter’s prophecy about false teachers has come true, these are most likely men in the original historical and cultural setting. See discussion of this point in the note on the phrase “these men” in 2 Pet 2:12.
9 tn “Among you” is not in the Greek text, but is obviously implied.
10 tn Or “in the past.” The adverb πάλαι (palai) can refer to either, though the meaning “long ago” is more common.
11 tn Grk “written about.”
12 tn Grk “for this condemnation.” τοῦτο (touto) is almost surely a kataphoric demonstrative pronoun, pointing to what follows in vv. 5-18. Otherwise, the condemnation is only implied (in v. 3b) or is merely a statement of their sinfulness (“ungodly” in v. 4b), not a judgment of it.
13 tn Grk “debauchery.” This is the same word Peter uses to predict what the false teachers will be like (2 Pet 2:2, 7, 18).
14 tc Most later witnesses (P Ψ Ï sy) have θεόν (qeon, “God”) after δεσπότην (despothn, “master”), which appears to be a motivated reading in that it explicitly links “Master” to “God” in keeping with the normal NT pattern (see Luke 2:29; Acts 4:24; 2 Tim 2:21; Rev 6:10). In patristic Greek, δεσπότης (despoth") was used especially of God (cf. BDAG 220 s.v. 1.b.). The earlier and better witnesses (Ì72,78 א A B C 0251 33 81 323 1241 1739 al co) lack θεόν; the shorter reading is thus preferred on both internal and external grounds.
15 tn The terms “Master and Lord” both refer to the same person. The construction in Greek is known as the Granville Sharp rule, named after the English philanthropist-linguist who first clearly articulated the rule in 1798. Sharp pointed out that in the construction article-noun-καί-noun (where καί [kai] = “and”), when two nouns are singular, personal, and common (i.e., not proper names), they always had the same referent. Illustrations such as “the friend and brother,” “the God and Father,” etc. abound in the NT to prove Sharp’s point. For more discussion see ExSyn 270-78. See also Titus 2:13 and 2 Pet 1:1
16 tn Or “they have gone the way of Cain.”
17 tn Grk “for wages.”
18 tn The verb ἐκχέω (ekcew) normally means “pour out.” Here, in the passive, it occasionally has a reflexive idea, as BDAG 312 s.v. 3. suggests (with extra-biblical examples).
19 tn Or “in.”
20 tn Grk “and.” See note on “perish” later in this verse.
21 tn The three verbs in this verse are all aorist indicative (“have gone down,” “have abandoned,” “have perished”). Although the first and second could be considered constative or ingressive, the last is almost surely proleptic (referring to the certainty of their future judgment). Although it may seem odd that a proleptic aorist is so casually connected to other aorists with a different syntactical force, it is not unparalleled (cf. Rom 8:30).
22 tn Heb “you will tread olives.” Literally treading on olives with one’s feet could be harmful and would not supply the necessary pressure to release the oil. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 119. The Hebrew term דָּרַךְ (darakh) may have an idiomatic sense of “press” here, or perhaps the imagery of the following parallel line (referring to treading grapes) has dictated the word choice.
23 tn Heb “but you will not rub yourselves with oil.”
24 tn Heb “and juice, but you will not drink wine.” The verb תִדְרֹךְ (tidrokh, “you will tread”) must be supplied from the preceding line.