Jude’s use of the phrase, “The Lord rebuke thee” is an obvious quote of Zechariah 3:5, which is the only place in the Old Testament the phrase occurs. We note further that in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint, LXX) used by Jude’s readers, “devil” (diabolos) occurs rather than “Satan.” This reconfirms that it is Zechariah to whom Jude is referring.
Nevertheless, there is still the niggling feeling that more is going on in Jude 9 than a straight quote of Zechariah. It is possible that there is a third alternative which we have been overlooking.
A third option
Sometimes the solutions to the most difficult problems are the simplest. The answer that fits best is the one that has been under one’s nose. The suggestion we would advance is that Jude’s words are not based on Zechariah 3 itself, but on a wresting of Zechariah 3 current among his opponents — the Enochites.
Michael pulling Joshua from the furnace
Consider first a rabbinic legend which could be very relevant to Jude 9 — the story of Ahab and Zedekiah. In the legend, these two false prophets at the court of Nebuchadnezzar were put in the furnace together with Joshua. Michael retrieved Joshua the priest from the fire but his clothes were singed by standing too close to the false prophets. (L. Ginzberg, Vol.7 p. 426 cites Sanhedrin93a, PK25:165a. Tan B:3:7).
This legend of Ahab and Zedekiah is likely nothing more than a fantastic attempt to explain Zechariah 3 and the “filthy garments” which prevented Joshua, the high priest, from serving in the tabernacle. The legend was no doubt created by someone with no understanding of the historical roots of Zechariah’s parable-prophecy – the opposition to Joshua’s work of rebuilding the temple as recorded in Ezra 4-6. But there are two interesting points to be drawn.
The first is that it is “Michael” who is credited with being the angel involved in saving Joshua — something not mentioned in Zechariah 3. This could explain that the puzzling addition of Michael’s name to Jude’s use of Zechariah 3 might not just be due to imagination on the part of Jude, but imagination on the part of Jewish teachers he was countering.
The second point is that it illustrates just how a later Jewish audience, distant from the historical background of Zechariah as amplified in Ezra, could misunderstand the parable-prophecy and take it literally. Having taken it literally they then invented a story to “fill in the gaps” much in the same way Christians later invented the “Assumption of Moses” story (April, 2001) to fill in the gaps in Jude 9.
Evidence for “wrested Zechariah”
The legend of Ahab and Zedekiah is the first piece of evidence in support of this third option for Jude 9. The fact that documentary evidence for the legend is found in at least three Jewish sources proves that misuse of Zechariah 3 by people with an active imagination is no recent phenomenon. Long before any Jehovah’s Witness or hell-fire evangelical wrested Zechariah 3, generations of Jewish fallen-angel believers had also been at work on the prophecy.
The second piece of evidence is the way Jude uses other Old Testament material. He treats Sinai (v.5), Sodom (v.7), Cain, Balaam and Korah (v.11) without adding to the Old Testament record. Yet when he comes to Zechariah 3, he suddenly, and gratuitously, adds in the name “Michael.” Our usual interpretation of Jude 9 tends to turn a blind eye to this, but the trouble is that the more you ignore the name, the more it sticks out like a sore thumb. In fact it sticks out twice over, because it is not only an obvious addition to the Old Testament version, but also a glaring addition to Jude’s primary source, Peter (II Pet. 2:11).
The third piece of evidence is that uncomfortable phrase “body of Moses.” The absence of any mention of “Joshua” in Jude’s version of the angelic dispute shows that “body of Moses” is in some way a substitute for Joshua. Anyone who denies this has to explain why Jude deleted Joshua and introduced Moses’ corpse into a dispute where the other two parties (the angel and the devil) remain the same as in Zechariah 3:1. But the question for us is why Jude created a problem where none existed, by not simply writing “Joshua.”
(Some readers may object that “body” here can be identified with the priesthood on the grounds that soma — the Greek word translated “body” — can also mean “slave” [R. Abel Wrested Scriptures p.182; H.A. Whittaker Those Difficult Passages p.70]. So Joshua, the priest, was the “slave” of Moses in that he was enslaved by the law given through Moses. The first problem with this is the lack of any Old Testament evidence using such a vocabulary in reference to the priests, and the second that the linguistic case for this use of soma in the singular is extremely weak [Footnote 1].)
The fourth piece of evidence in favour of the “wrested Zechariah” theory is the strongest. If we make the logical assumptions that the wresting of Zechariah in Jude verse 9 is connected with the Enoch before (Jude v. 6) and after (vv. 12-15) the evidence suddenly falls into place. Commentators usually make no effort to relate the likely mythical references in verse 9, with the evident references in verses 6, 12-15 to Enoch. They seem to think Jude is just throwing out examples from Jewish mythology at random. But if we see Jude 9 as part of Jude’s struggle with the Enochites, it ceases to be a separate problem and becomes an integral part of his argument showing Enoch to be non-inspired.
The proposed solution to Jude 9 is this:
- We know that Jude is primarily concerned with problems predicted earlier by Peter. In particular Jude was concerned with the growth of a belief in fallen angels within the church. The first half of Jude’s letter is largely requoting, emphasising and expanding upon what Peter had written (II Pet. 2) but which was apparently being ignored by the believers.
- It is also clear that in the intervening period between Peter’s last letter and Jude’s the problem had increased, and the battle lines had been drawn. Peter wrote in warning to the whole ecclesia (II Pet. 2:1), but Jude writes only to one party in the ecclesia (Jude 3-4), urging them to “earnestly contend for the faith.” Sadly this verse has become one of those cliché verses, like “strengthening the things that remain,” which are so frequently quoted out of context, that they begin to lose their meaning. Jude’s words are not a license to be contentious. In the original context, to “earnestly contend for the faith” meant to persist inside an ecclesia, where some members were not only actively teaching full-blown devil belief, but “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4), with the objective of saving as many as possible (see Jude 22-23 in a modern translation). Contentiousness will only achieve the opposite result. Now let’s put the shoe on the other foot and consider the position of the false teachers. We can see they had some following because Jude says they had succeeded in dividing the ecclesia (Jude 19, apodiorizontes which means “who create divisions” rather than “who separate themselves” KJV). The divisions were not yet a clear break, however, as both sides were still breaking bread with each other (Jude 12). It may not have been clear exactly who supported whom, and there would, as always, have been a large number of undecided (which explains the caution advised in Jude 22-23). If the ecclesia was divided, it means that those loyal to the memory of Peter were still putting
- Imagine for a moment that you were a false teacher preaching “angels that sinned.” Some of the ecclesia have already accepted the authority of the Book of Enoch, but those loyal to Peter say the book is a fake. The undecided (Jude 22) demand evidence from the Old Testament. You, false teacher, have a problem. Not everyone, by any means, accepts your assertion that “Sons of God” in Genesis 6 are angels. It is likely that the Gospel of Luke was already widely distributed by the late ’60s AD (II Cor. 8:18; I Tim.5:18 cf. Luke 10:7), and any claims about Genesis 6 will be immediately countered by Luke 20:36, where “sons of God” is defined by Christ as believers, rather than angels who marry (both KJV and NIV are inaccurate here; the Greek is huioi “sons,” not teknoi “children”). You, false teacher, can refer to I Chron. 21:1, where the diabolos (Septuagint) stood up against David, but the Peter-loyalists will immediately turn to the parallel account in II Sam. 24:1. You can try Job, but even if the diabolos (Septuagint again) is understood to be an angel, he is obviously neither in rebellion against God, nor in conflict with the other angels. In fact, in the entire Old Testament, the only example of conflict angel versus angel you can find is the one used for the purpose of arguing the existence of the devil today — Zechariah 3:1. In short, it doesn’t take much imagination to suppose that the Enochites would try to shore up their story with Zechariah 3:1. It’s simply the only verse in the whole Old Testament that could be used.
- Now we can explain Jude’s mention of the diabolos Although neither the Devil nor Satan feature in Enoch, neither do angels named Shemihazah or Azazel feature in the Old Testament [Footnote 2]. But if the false teachers were to introduce a wrested interpretation of Zechariah 3, it now makes sense for Jude to respond using the language of the Greek Old Testament used in the ecclesia — diabolos not Shemihazah.
- Jude’s mention of Michael is now easily explained. We saw earlier (the furnace story) that Jewish teachers placed Michael in Zechariah 3. Even without that legend as evidence, it is no great leap for the false teachers, in a desperate search for scriptural support, to turn the struggle of Michael vs. Shemihazah in Enoch, into Michael vs. the devil in Zechariah. Admittedly this is a reconstruction based on educated guesswork, but if anyone objects, let him find another verse in the Old Testament which can be wrested so easily to support Enoch. And if we reject this reconstruction of events, then how do we explain Jude having added Michael into the Zechariah narrative? Yes, he was forced to make more direct use than Peter of I Enoch 9 by naming Michael as the accuser, but he was also attempting to reclaim Zechariah 3. If we can imagine that the verse was being wrested, we can certainly agree that Jude would “earnestly contend” against this. He was doing exactly what any Christadelphian would do today when faced with a wrested scripture (it’s no coincidence that the very phrase “wrested scripture” comes from II Pet. 3:16 — immediately after Peter’s rejection of fallen angels).
- By tackling Zechariah 3:1 head-on, Jude achieved two things. Firstly, if the teachers were going to claim that the verse supported I Enoch 9 regarding fallen angels, then it would backfire on them. They quoted Zechariah? Fine, but let them see that the “Michael” in Zechariah does no accusing; in fact, he does not even rebuke. Instead of what the false teachers had expected, quoting Zechariah 3 in fact achieves the opposite and shows that I Enoch 9 is false.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Jude turns Zechariah’s parable back to the prophet’s original intent. Everything we know about Zechariah shows us that he was not only concerned with fighting false teaching, but also concerned with practical — what we would call pastoral — issues. The first time we hear of Zechariah it is as a bricklayer (Ezra 5:11), and with him worked 150 men, all of them “earnestly contending” to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Ezra 8:11).
There is a lesson for us here. It’s all too easy to concentrate on the necessary but negative (such as exposing a wrested interpretation), and to neglect to follow this up with the positive (such as aftercare of those who get damaged by wrested teaching). Jude could have dealt with Zechariah 3:1 in Jude 9 and left it at that. But he didn’t. After dealing with misuse of Zechariah 3 he returns to the same chapter to remind the Peter loyalists not to get so carried away in the battle with false teaching that they forgot the needs of the weakest (Jude 22-23, compare Zech. 3:2-4). Jude was exhorting them to “build” themselves up (Jude 20, compare Zech.1 :16, 3:7,4:9). - We have now explained all of Jude 9 except for one thing –”the body of Moses.”
In an earlier article we saw that although the “wanderer stars” in Jude 13 primarily refers to the “fallen stars” chained up in the underworld prison-house of Enoch (I En.18:14, 21:1-10), the word “wanderer” can only be found in an Old Testament description of Jewish errorists (Hosea 9:17), and Jude is casting the false teachers themselves in the role of the fallen angels. He is turning the myth on its head, and then throwing it back at those who teach it.
If Jude does that in verse 13 he could be doing it in verse 9 as well. In verse 9, he is likely recasting the false teachers as Zechariah’s Satan. This fits the context perfectly, as both the previous verse (v. 8), and the one following (v. 10), are not about the devil but about the false teachers. The “body of Moses” that Jude would be referring to would be Jewish Christians (1 Pet.1:1), who were in danger of “returning like a dog to its vomit” (II Pet. 2:22). This would explain why Jude does not simply write “Joshua,” and also why it is “the body of Moses” rather than “body of Christ.”
Jude and Ezra
The clincher in favour of this argument is that it gives Jude and his readers the credit for knowing their Bibles. While fallen-angel believers both in Jude’s day, and our own, are drawn to Zechariah 3 like bees to a honey-pot, the way that Jude departs from the text of Zechariah does not show ignorance (as the commentaries assume), but rather, that he is going deeper than just Zechariah, right down to the events in Ezra which underlie the prophecy. It is likely that the “accuser” (Hebrew, satan) in Zechariah 3:1 is to be identified with the “accusation” (Hebrew, sitnah) in Ezra 4:6. If this is so, then Jude expected his readers to understand that the diabolos accusing Joshua was human. If they knew their Bibles well enough to identify the diabolos of Zechariah 3 as Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, Rehum and Shimshai (Ezra 4:1-24), they also had enough intelligence to identify the diabolos of Jude 9 with the false teachers.
This argument is stronger still if we revise our assumption that “Joshua” in Zechariah 3 represents the priesthood. Following the thinking of Hebrews 5, the high priest might better represent the people. In this case, the absence of “Joshua” from Jude 9 is explained by seeing, as we already have done, that Zechariah was primarily concerned not with the priests, but with the wellbeing of their flock. Our parallel would then have: “Judah and Benjamin” (Ezra 4:1) — “Joshua the high priest” (Zech. 3:1) — Jewish Christians (Jude 9). By using the phrase “body of Moses,” Jude is acknowledging the existence of the myths, acknowledging the wresting of Zechariah, but directing his audience away from this back toward the accusers of Israel in Ezra.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One