Jude
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The New Testament

Jude

The King James text of 1611, set beside a plain-English rendering, so the original may be both read and understood.

Reading & highlighting: the left is the original King James Version; the right is a plain-English paraphrase to make the meaning clear. Select across one or more verses to highlight it in one of four colors. Click a verse number to bookmark it, and open Saved in the top bar to see everything you've marked and jump straight to it. Your highlights are saved automatically. You're reading Jude — 1 chapter.
I
Chapter 1
King James Version — 1611
In Plain English
1Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:
1Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:
2Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
2Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
3Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
3Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people.
4For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
4For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
5I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.
5Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe.
6And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
6And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.
7Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
7In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
8Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
8In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings.
9Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
9But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, "The Lord rebuke you!"
10But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.
10Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them.
11Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.
11Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion.
12These 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;
12These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.
13Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
13They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
14And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
14Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones
15To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
15to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
16These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.
16These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.
17But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ;
17But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold.
18How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.
18They said to you, "In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires."
19These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.
19These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
20But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
20But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,
21Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
21keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
22And of some have compassion, making a difference:
22Be merciful to those who doubt;
23And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
23save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
24Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
24To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—
25To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
25to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
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Reader’s Companion

Contend for the Faith

Jude introduces himself simply as "a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James"—and since the James he means is almost certainly James of Jerusalem, that makes Jude, like him, a brother of Jesus. He says nothing of that family tie, calling himself only a servant; like his brother James, he seems to have come to faith after the resurrection. His letter is one of the shortest and least-read books of the New Testament, but it is also one of the most vivid and fierce, packed into twenty-five verses of white-hot warning.

Jude tells us he had meant to write a warm letter about "the salvation we share," but events forced his hand. Certain people had "secretly slipped in" among the churches—teachers who twisted God's grace into an excuse for immorality and denied the lordship of Christ. So instead he writes an urgent summons: "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people." The bulk of the letter is a relentless catalog of warning examples drawn from Israel's history and beyond—the unbelievers destroyed after the exodus, the fallen angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain, Balaam, Korah—each one a portrait of where rebellion ends. He piles up images of these false teachers as "clouds without rain," "autumn trees without fruit," "wild waves of the sea," "wandering stars." He even quotes the ancient book of Enoch and alludes to a tradition about Michael disputing over the body of Moses, drawing freely on the wider literature his readers knew.

Yet for all its thunder, the letter does not end in condemnation. It turns, in its final verses, to gentle pastoral care—"be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire"—and then rises to one of the most magnificent doxologies in all of Scripture: "To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy... be glory, majesty, power and authority." It is a fitting close to the General Letters: a hard warning wrapped in a final, soaring note of confidence in God.

An Interpretation

Written with AIThe reflection below was written by AI as commentary—one reader's lens on the text, offered alongside it and never in place of it. It is not scripture, and not the King James words themselves.

Jude is the New Testament's emergency flare—short, bright, and lit because something is on fire. You can feel the change of plans in the third verse: he sat down to write one thing and had to write another, because the threat was too immediate to ignore. That gives the letter its breathless intensity. This is not a measured treatise; it is a man raising the alarm, reaching for every image of barrenness and ruin he can lay hands on to make his readers see the danger they were treating casually.

What he is fighting is a particularly seductive error: the idea that grace means anything goes. The infiltrators had taken the most beautiful truth of the faith—that God forgives freely—and turned it into permission to do as they pleased. Jude's fury is the fury of someone watching a gift be weaponized. Grace, for him, was never a loophole; it was a rescue, and to treat your rescue as a license to keep drowning is to misunderstand it completely.

But the most instructive thing about Jude is where he lands. After all the fire and brimstone, his closing instructions are surprisingly gentle and carefully calibrated: be merciful to the doubters, urgently rescue those in danger, show mercy even to the rest, while staying clear of the corruption yourself. He does not tell his readers to become as hard as the thing they are fighting. And his final word is not a threat but a reassurance—that the God who calls them is also "able to keep you from stumbling." Contend, yes; but rest, finally, not in your own grip on God but in his grip on you.