The Story of the Fallen Angels.—St. Jude (vv. 5-8) introduces as examples of the divine wrath against those who had sinned after receiving favours from God (1) the Israelites who perished in the wilderness for unbelief after they had been saved from Egypt; (2) the angels who abandoned their original office and habitation, being led. away by fleshy lusts, and are now kept in chains under darkness till the day of judgment; (3) the people of Sodom, who inhabited a land. like the garden of the Lord (Gen. xiii. 10), who were rescued from Chedorlaomer by Abraham (Gen. xiv. 16, 17), and yet sinned after the fashion of the angels, and are now a warning to all, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. A similar account is given in 2 Pet. ii.4-9 where it is said (1) that God spared not the angels who sinned, but. hurled them into Tartarus, to be detained there in chains (or pits) of darkness until the final judgment; (2) that He brought a flood on the world of the ungodly, while he spared Noah; (8) that He destroyed. Sodom and Gomorrah, while he delivered righteous Lot; in all three cases punishing impurity and rebellion.
As is shown in the explanatory notes, this account of the Fall of. the Angels is taken directly from the book of Enoch, which is itself an expansion from Jewish and Gentile sources of the strange narrative contained in Gen. vi. 1-4: “It came to pass, when men began to: multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair ; and they took them wives of all that they chose. . . . The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bare children unto- them : the same were the mighty men which were of old, the men of renown” (R.V.). ἐγένετο ἡνίκα Apgavto οἱ ἄνθρωποι πολλοὶ γίνεσθαι ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ θυγατέρες ἐγεννήθησαν αὐτοῖς, ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ Θεοῦ τὰς θυγατέρας τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὅτι καλαὶ εἰσὶν έλαβον ἑαυτοῖς yuvatkas ἀπὸ. πασῶν ὧν ἐξελέξαντο . . . οἱ δὲ γίγαντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις. ἐκείναις, καὶ peT ἐκεῖνο, ὡς ἂν εἰσεπορεύοντο οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ πρὸς τὰς. θυγατέρας τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἐγέννωσαν ἑαυτοῖς, ἐκεῖνοι ἦσαν οἱ γίγαντες ol. ἀπ᾿ αἰῶνος, ot ἄνθρωποι οἱ ὀνομαστοί (LXX). That the version ἄγγελοι.