Jude 1:7

Jude 1:7, in plain English

Just like Sodom and Gomorrah, which are now a permanent example of destruction because of sexual immorality and perversion, these false teachers will face the same eternal punishment.

Why it's here

Jude is connecting the false teachers to a biblical cautionary tale everyone knew. Sodom and Gomorrah weren't just destroyed—they were left as a sign, a warning that still stands. He's saying the pattern is consistent: when people reject God's boundaries and embrace what He calls 'strange flesh' (sexual sin against His design), judgment follows. And it's not temporary; it's eternal fire. This is how serious these boundaries are.

Who's speaking

Jude, using historical judgment as a warning.

Where it sits in the story

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah appears throughout Scripture as the ultimate example of God's response to sexual rebellion and the rejection of His order. Jude is showing that nothing has changed—God's standards remain.

The scholarly reading

Sodom, Gomorrah, and surrounding cities pursued sexual immorality and unnatural desire, serving as an eternal example of those condemned to perpetual fire.

Language and setting

The phrase 'strange flesh' (sarkos heteras)—literally 'different flesh'—has generated considerable exegetical debate. Patristic commentators like Chrysostom and Augustine understood this as sodomy specifically. The punishment is described as 'eternal fire' (pur aionion), establishing judgment as permanent and irrevocable. These cities function as what scholars call a 'displayed example' (deigma) of divine retribution—their destruction remains visibly present to warn future generations. Jude employs the Sodom narrative not merely as sexual prohibition but as evidence of God's intolerance for those who 'go after different flesh,' a formulation suggesting deviation from natural law.

Voice

Jude, providing the second historical precedent

Significance

Genesis's narrative of Sodom's destruction acquires eschatological weight: the cities become an eternal monument to divine judgment, demonstrating that sexual transgression and rebellion against divine order carry cosmic consequences that extend beyond temporal punishment into the eternal eschaton.

5Although you are fully aware of this, I want to remind you that after Jesus had delivered His people out of the land of Egypt, He destroyed those who did not believe.

6And the angels who did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day.

7In like manner, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display as an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire.

8Yet in the same way these dreamers defile their bodies, reject authority, and slander glorious beings.

9But even the archangel Michael, when he disputed with the devil over the body of Moses, did not presume to bring a slanderous charge against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

Read all of Jude 1 — Jude intended to write about salvation. Instead, he writes about danger — false teachers who have crept in unnoticed. His response is urgent.