A Threefold Typology of Troublers
Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
Jude 11
This is, as Bauckham points out, “a woe oracle,”1 an easy point to miss in a letter. It was frequently used in the Prophets and it was repeated by Jesus in Matthew 23. To pronounce woe is to communicate that someone is under the curse of God. So, for example,
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20)
And just as Jude had done with the first three examples (vv. 5-7), he once again returns to the Old Testament. Bauckham also suggests that Jude is intensifying his examples, from those who rebelled in ancient days to those who led rebellions, even as false teachers. One difficulty with that is that, even granting a looser meaning to “teachers,” such as leaders, Cain was not yet a leader except, perhaps, by extension to those who would later follow in his line. And that would seem to get us away from the nature of his sin that we would actually find in the text of Genesis.
But this calls for some theologizing from the immediate text to the exemplary text. Jude’s whole use of these examples has to settle in on the way that these were leaders who were leading astray. They were “ringleaders,” we might say. What we are really after is a typology. We may think of types in the Bible only as they point forward to Christ, or else as pointing to elements of the promises of the gospel for the church. But there can also be types of evildoers, and in fact Scripture is full of them. Pharoah is a type of the devil, as the chains of Egypt were a type of the bondage to sin. Ishmael was a type of those who would persecute the sons of the promise (cf. Gal. 4:29).
Naturally we must be familiar with these accounts if we are to know the way (or typology) of apostasy in them. So that must come first.
The Way of Cain
It would seem that with Cain we have three possibilities for this “way” that is being condemned. Is it his sacrifice that was rejected by God? Was it the murder of his brother Abel? Or was it the cursed offspring that he would go on to father? In later Jewish tradition Cain was seen as “the first heretic,”2 or by Philo as, “the archetypal egoist.” Josephus was even specific in arguing that he “taught [sin] to others.”3 When considering this, we must remember that the answer will have to fit the charge that Jude is making. It must be an analogous “way” to that of those teachers who had crept in with their antinomianism.
To speak of “walking in the way” is reminiscent of Psalm 1 and speaks of following not merely after a teaching but a moral example. Another place in the New Testament tells us,
“We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1 Jn. 3:12).
Yes, the murder is mentioned, but John assigns a cause prior to that act—to deeds already being evil. More than that, he was OF THE EVIL ONE. Of course that is true for all those not in Christ (cf. Eph. 2:1-3). But at times a special point is made of it to make a kind of “like father like son” link, as when Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (Jn. 8:44).
Another commentator suggests that this implies “a past tense activity for Jude’s false teachers.”4 It may not lead to murder. But if it leads to heresy and a point of no return in deceiving the church, then whatever got Cain to his place of murdering the body got them to their place of murdering souls. I think this is the right way to view the expression. Cain’s sin was a progression and Genesis 4:7 is a concise study in the devolution of the reprobate soul. God made the point to reason with this disintegrating heart, well aware of his own eternal decree. The “divine counsel” to his heart was for our benefit. But what benefit if we could not know anything about the way of Cain?
Have we not witnessed many promising young ministers or seminarians who move from withholding their best from God, to then envy toward their brother, to not heeding the counsel of wisdom, to finally lashing out at some point of no return, until we find them driven further east in exile from the city of God? This is the way of Cain, and it need not be a mystery.
The Error of Balaam
Balaam’s inclusion here is most difficult at least because he appears to have had integrity. Though he was not a prophet of the people of God, he shunned telling the pagan king what he wanted to hear. We are told,
“Balaam answered and said to the servants of Balak, ‘Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God to do less or more’” (Numb. 22:18; cf. 24:13).
How then could he have been in error? The best we can do is to reconstruct a scenario in which Balaam is shown to be resisting this temptation, but that the very act of being hired to begin with was itself a prostitution of prophecy. So we also read, “they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you” (Deut. 23:4), and “no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, for they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet our God turned the curse into a blessing” (Neh. 13:1-2). So it would appear that Balaam was providentially steered in the right direction to frustrate the plans of these pagans. Nevertheless the “prophet for hire” is still a grevious error.
Although this is sufficient to resolve the conundrum, there may actually be more to Balaam’s own sin than meets the eye. Davids explains,
“More importantly, picking up on Num 31:16 (and perhaps the references in Num 31:8 and Josh 13:22, which place Balaam in Moab after his first encounter with Balak), Balaam was portrayed as the one who advised Moab to entice Israel to sin through fornication, that is, who is behind the incident of Baal Peor (Num 25:1-3). This concept is found throughout later Jewish tradition (e.g., Josephus, Ant. 4.126-30; Philo, Vit. Mos. 1.292-99; b. Sanhedrin 106a).”5
This is important context because we do not want to resolve the prior dilemma in a shallow way. Some may see that Balaam’s error involved taking money—therefore, they reason, to receive a paycheck at all is to be this prophet for hire. The trouble with this is evident to any serious student of Scripture. Paul made the pay of ministers as much a norm for new covenant pastors as for the Levitical priests. Indeed, he even cited the civil (Deut. 25:4) and ceremonial (Deut. 18:1-8)6 laws for the New Testament practice in 1 Corinthians 9:9, 13 and 1 Timothy 5:17-18. A bit more common sense would tell us that the sin is precisely the act of compromise in tailoring the message to the money. It is to be a “court preacher” however big that court is, or whether one’s “rulers” be some wealthy doners, the committe of nagging women, supposedly important people to impress, or the wrath of a mob to appease.
The Rebellion of Korah
Here we have the example that is most like a division within the body leading to apostasy. We find the incident in Numbers 16. Although Israel as a whole is depicted as grumbling against Moses on many occasions, here there was a much more pronounced mutiny. It was given an order. This is more clearly what is meant by a heretic—one who not only entertains error, even about an essential doctrine, but who leads a faction against the oneness of the body with that falsehood. There were obvious others in the New Testament church who exhibited this same self-exalation. Hymenaeus and Alexander and Philetus (1 Tim. 1:20; 2 Tim. 2:17), or “Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, [and] does not acknowledge our authority” (3 Jn. 9).
Aaron and Miriam likewise exalted themselves above Moses. Why should so and so rule over us? Who made that person king and judge? He is nothing but a mortal like us! That is the heart rebellion behind the outward rabble-rousing. That they were ultimately spared is owing to God’s grace. But the species of pride was the same as in the situation with Korah. In short, Manton says, “It is Korah’s sin to invade offices without a call, and to destroy the order that God has established.
Like a true Puritan, he applies the surgery to our soul on this third example,
“All divisions can be traced back to our lusts. People who are not content with their own position and desire to be promited break rank. It is an excellent thing to be content with your own position in life. Jesus Christ was content with his lowly position. If God has denied you a particular position in the world that you desire, you are either not worthy of it, or it is not a suitable position for you to hold.”7
We ought to be more afraid of displeasing our true Master than of missing out on some illusion of mastery over such small scraps of this time and place.
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1. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 77.
2. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 79.
3. Josephus, Antiquities, i.52-62.
4. Towner, 2 Peter and Jude, 198.
5. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, 66.
6. cf. Lev. 6:16, 26; 7:6; Num. 5:9, 10; 18:8-20.
7. Manton, Jude, 163.
