Jude 1:10 - Exposition

The description of the men dealt with in Jude 1:8 is resumed, their impious irreverence and self-indulgence being set over against Michael's bearing. The corresponding passage in 2 Peter 2:12 is less definite. Here we have two pointed statements, one referring to the railers at dignities, the other to the defilers of the flesh in 2 Peter 2:8 . But these rail at whatsoever things they know not: and what they understand naturally, like the creatures without reason, in those things are they destroyed. So the Revised Version renders it, with much more precision than the Authorized Version, and preserving the distinction which appears in the original between two verbs," knowing" and "understanding," applied to two different classes of objects. The idea is that high and holy objects are beyond their knowledge, and their understanding is limited to the senses, the physical wants and appetites which they have in common with the brutes. In the case of the former they are rash and profane of speech where they should be silent and restrained; in the case of the latter they use them only to their own undoing. The turn of the phrase, "in these they are destroyed" (or, "destroy themselves"), indicates, perhaps, how absolutely they are lost in the service of the physical appetites. The words which Milton makes the tempter use of himself have been cited as a parallel to this verse—

"I was at first as other beasts that graze

The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low,

As was my food; nor aught but food discerned

Or sex, and apprehended nothing high."

('Paradise Lost,' 9:571-574.)