Readings:
Isaiah 10
Proverbs 7
Jude 1

Isaiah 10

God has some words to say to those who oppress the weak and take advantage of those under their power. Just because the kings are rulers doesn’t mean they own the people and the land, theyd do better to consider themselves as stewards. But many, especially the more wicked ones, had taken advantage of the people and enriched themselves by the people’s sweat and tears. No more says God, he’ll use the Assyrians as a tool of his divine judgment.

But when he’s done using the king of Assyria to deliver justice, then he’s going to be cut down too, because he’s worse than all the rest.

Jude

The Epistle of Jude is only a single chapter, and is an emergency appeal to an established Christian community some time in the first century. The appeal centers on a rash of false teachers that have come to the community and attempted to turn the people from the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” as Jude himself puts it.

As for the author, we know his name is Jude and he is the brother of a man named James. That’s about it as far as concrete facts go. Some hold that he is the apostle Thaddeus, who also went by the name Jude, but I think a more compelling argument is that he was one of the sons of Alphaeus, who are mentioned as the brethren of Christ in the New Testament.

Part of the reason for that is that he drops James into his text as a kind of marker that this community should recognize as a person of authority, and the person who most likely fits that bill is James the Lesser, who was a son of Alphaeus and the bishop of Jerusalem after Peter left for Antioch.

Jude warns the people not to stray from what they’ve been taught by the disciples and gives a list of examples from the Old Testament of what happens to those who engage in immoral behavior like Sodom or ignore the warnings of God. He even cites a story about Saint Michael that’s from an apocryphal writing called The Assumption of Moses, and cites a passage from the book of Enoch as well.

It’s unclear what these false teachers were doing, but it seems like teaching some kind of false sexual morality and possibly using that to take advantage of some members of the community seems likely.

Readings:
Isaiah 11-12
Proverbs 8