Jude 1:13-14

1:13 wild sea waves, ¹  spewing out the foam of ²  their shame; ³  wayward stars ⁴  for whom the utter depths of eternal darkness ⁵  have been reserved.

1:14 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, ⁶  even prophesied of them, ⁷  saying, “Look! The Lord is coming ⁸  with thousands and thousands ⁹  of his holy ones,

Proverbs 1:28

1:28 Then they will call to me, but I will not answer;

they will diligently seek ¹⁰  me, but they will not find me.

Isaiah 1:15

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ¹¹ 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ¹² 

Isaiah 59:2

59:2 But your sinful acts have alienated you from your God;

your sins have caused him to reject you and not listen to your prayers. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 11:11

11:11 So I, the Lord, say this: ¹⁴  ‘I will soon bring disaster on them which they will not be able to escape! When they cry out to me for help, I will not listen to them.

Jeremiah 14:12

14:12 Even if they fast, I will not hear their cries for help. Even if they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. ¹⁵  Instead, I will kill them through wars, famines, and plagues.” ¹⁶ 

Micah 3:4

3:4 Someday these sinners will cry to the Lord for help, ¹⁷ 

but he will not answer them.

He will hide his face from them at that time,

because they have done such wicked deeds.”

Zechariah 7:13

7:13 “‘It then came about that just as I ¹⁸  cried out, but they would not obey, so they will cry out, but I will not listen,’ the Lord Lord who rules over all had said.

Luke 13:25

13:25 Once ¹⁹  the head of the house ²⁰  gets up ²¹  and shuts the door, then you will stand outside and start to knock on the door and beg him, ‘Lord, ²²  let us in!’ ²³  But he will answer you, ²⁴  ‘I don’t know where you come from.’ ²⁵ 

[1:13]  ¹ tn Grk “wild waves of the sea.”

[1:13]  ² tn Grk “foaming, causing to foam.” The verb form is intensive and causative. BDAG 360 s.v. ἐπαφρίζω suggests the meaning “to cause to splash up like froth, cause to foam,” or, in this context, “waves casting up their own shameless deeds like (dirty) foam.”

[1:13]  ³ tn Grk “shames, shameful things.” It is uncertain whether shameful deeds or shameful words are in view. Either way, the picture has taken a decided turn: Though waterless clouds and fruitless trees may promise good things, but deliver nothing, wild sea-waves are portents of filth spewed forth from the belly of the sea.

[1:13]  ⁴ sn The imagery of a star seems to fit the nautical theme that Jude is developing. Stars were of course the guides to sailors at night, just as teachers are responsible to lead the flock through a benighted world. But false teachers, as wayward stars, are not fixed and hence offer unreliable, even disastrous guidance. They are thus both the dangerous reefs on which the ships could be destroyed and the false guides, leading them into these rocks. There is a special irony that these lights will be snuffed out, reserved for the darkest depths of eternal darkness.

[1:13]  ⁵ tn Grk “utter darkness of darkness for eternity.” See note on the word “utter” in v. 6.

[1:14]  ⁶ tn Grk “the seventh from Adam.”

[1:14]  ⁷ tn Grk “against them.” The dative τούτοις (toutois) is a dativus incommodi (dative of disadvantage).

[1:14]  ⁸ tn Grk “has come,” a proleptic aorist.

[1:14]  ⁹ tn Grk “ten thousands.” The word μυριάς (muria"), from which the English myriad is derived, means “ten thousand.” In the plural it means “ten thousands.” This would mean, minimally, 20,000 (a multiple of ten thousand). At the same time, the term was often used in apocalyptic literature to represent simply a rather large number, without any attempt to be specific.

[1:28]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “look to.” The verb שָׁחַר (shakhar, “to look”) is used figuratively of intensely looking (=seeking) for deliverance out of trouble (W. L. Holladay, Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 366); cf. NLT “anxiously search for.” It is used elsewhere in parallelism with בָּקַשׁ (baqash, “to seek rescue”; Hos 5:15). It does not mean “to seek early” (cf. KJV) as is popularly taught due to etymological connections with the noun שַׁחַר (shakhar, “dawn”; so BDB 1007 s.v. שָׁחַר).

[1:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ¹² sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[59:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “and your sins have caused [his] face to be hidden from you so as not to hear.”

[11:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Therefore, thus, says the Lord.” The person has been shifted in the translation in accordance with the difference between Hebrew and English style.

[14:12]  ¹⁵ sn See 6:16-20 for parallels.

[14:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “through sword, starvation, and plague.”

[3:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “then they will cry out to the Lord.” The words “Someday these sinners” have been supplied in the translation for clarification.

[7:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “he.” Since the third person pronoun refers to the Lord, it has been translated as a first person pronoun (“I”) to accommodate English style, which typically does not exhibit switches between persons of pronouns in the same immediate context as Hebrew does.

[13:25]  ¹⁹ tn The syntactical relationship between vv. 24-25 is disputed. The question turns on whether v. 25 is connected to v. 24 or not. A lack of a clear connective makes an independent idea more likely. However, one must then determine what the beginning of the sentence connects to. Though it makes for slightly awkward English, the translation has opted to connect it to “he will answer” so that this functions, in effect, as an apodosis. One could end the sentence after “us” and begin a new sentence with “He will answer” to make simpler sentences, although the connection between the two sentences is thereby less clear. The point of the passage, however, is clear. Once the door is shut, because one failed to come in through the narrow way, it is closed permanently. The moral: Do not be too late in deciding to respond.

[13:25]  ²⁰ tn Or “the master of the household.”

[13:25]  ²¹ tn Or “rises,” or “stands up.”

[13:25]  ²² tn Or “Sir.”

[13:25]  ²³ tn Grk “Open to us.”

[13:25]  ²⁴ tn Grk “and answering, he will say to you.” This is redundant in contemporary English and has been simplified to “he will answer you.”

[13:25]  ²⁵ sn For the imagery behind the statement “I do not know where you come from,” see Ps 138:6; Isa 63:16; Jer 1:5; Hos 5:3.