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Jude describes his opponents as wandering stars, a metaphor found in the Testament of Naphtali, where the predictable movements of the sun, moon, and stars are contrasted with the unpredictable movement of the planets, interpreted as rebellious angels.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Testament of Naphtali 3:2
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
Pseudepigrapha
1 So do not be eager to corrupt your deeds through greed or to deceive your souls with empty words; for if you keep silent with a pure heart, you will understand how to hold fast to the will of God and to cast away the will of Beliar. 2 The sun, the moon, and the stars do not change their order; so you too must not change the law of God by the disorder of your deeds. 3 The Gentiles went astray and abandoned the Lord; they changed their order and obeyed sticks and stones, the spirits of dishonesty. 4 But you must not be like that, my children. Recognize in the sky, the earth, the sea, and all created things the Lord who made everything, so that you do not become like Sodom, which changed the order of nature. 5 In the same way the Watchers also changed the order of their nature, and the Lord cursed them at the flood; because of them he made the earth uninhabited and barren.
Jude 1:13
New Testament
11 Woe to them! For they have traveled down Cain’s path, and because of greed have abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error; hence, they will certainly perish in Korah’s rebellion. 12 These men are dangerous reefs at your love feasts, feasting without reverence, feeding only themselves. They are waterless clouds, carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit—twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild sea waves, spewing out the foam of their shame; wayward stars for whom the utter depths of eternal darkness have been reserved. 14 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, even prophesied of them, saying, “Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all, and to convict every person of all their thoroughly ungodly deeds that they have committed, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
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Notes and References
"... 1 Enoch draws a parallel between the stars and the angels. Just as there are obedient and disobedient angels, there are also obedient and disobedient stars. 1 Enoch 18:15 describes the place of punishment for stars who did not arrive punctually for their duties in the sky and 1 Enoch 21 speaks of seven stars who are bound for their sin for ten million years. Nickelsberg identifies a long-standing tradition in the ancient Near East and Hellenistic world in which the stars are personified, and in 1 Enoch the disobedient stars are an allusion to the disobedient angels. The Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 83–90) adds another condemnation of the fallen angels in that the fallen stars have sex with cows (1 Enoch 83), are punished (then the great flood follows immediately) (1 Enoch 88), and are judged and thrown into a fiery abyss (1 Enoch 90:21). Testament of Naphtali 3.2–5 illustrates the obedience of the sun, moon, and stars in contrast to the disobedience of others, including the sinful angels. Jude’s focus on the failure of the angels to keep their proper place also fits well with Jude 13, where he speaks of his opponents as wandering stars. In comparing his opponents to wandering stars, he makes an analogy between his opponents and the fallen angels who were represented as stars in 1 Enoch 17–21 ..."
Devivo, Jenny
2 Peter 2:4-16: The Redaction of the Biblical and Intertestamental References Dependent on Jude 5-11 and Their Overall Significance
(p. 42) Loyola University Chicago, 2014
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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