The Argument Michael Would Not Have

Jude calls them dreamers, which is his word rather than ours, and then lists three things they do. They defile their bodies, they reject authority, and they slander glorious beings. The three sit together on purpose. A person who has decided that nobody is over him will not be careful with his body or with his mouth, and the middle item is the hinge the other two swing on.

Then comes the strangest verse in the letter. Jude puts it there as a comparison rather than as a story told for its own sake.

But even the archangel Michael, when he disputed with the devil over the body of Moses, did not presume to bring a slanderous charge against him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!"

That verse is careful about what it claims. It does not say Michael was frightened and it does not say he lost the argument, only that he did not presume. Presume is a word about rank. Michael is described here as an archangel, he is in a genuine dispute, he is arguing with the devil of all people, and the charge is still not brought. Jude does not say why. What Michael says instead hands the matter upward: the Lord rebuke you.

So the contrast Jude builds is not between a strong angel and weak men. It runs the other way. Jude picks an archangel and reports his restraint, and he sets that beside men who slander what they do not understand.

Verse 10 names what it is that they slander. The answer is the sharpest line on the page.

These men, however, slander what they do not understand, and like irrational animals, they will be destroyed by the things they do instinctively.

They slander what they do not understand. That is a description of confidence without knowledge, and most of us recognize it long before we recognize it in ourselves. Then Jude says they are like irrational animals, and he does not mean it as an insult about intelligence. He explains it in the same sentence: what animals do, they do instinctively, without deciding. A man who has stopped submitting to anybody has not become free by doing it. He is left running on impulse, and the verse says the impulses are what destroy him.

Set verse 9 beside verse 10 and the whole page is one question. Who gets to speak, and about what? Michael, in a dispute with the devil himself, did not. These men understand nothing of what they are talking about, and they slander anyway.