12 feasts of charity. Literally, this means “rocks in your love-feasts.”

12 feeding themselves. Literally, “shepherding themselves,” with each man doing what is right in his own eyes for his own purposes.

12 twice dead. In contrast to born-again believers, who are occasionally called “twice-born” men and women, there are some people who already are “twice dead.” That is, not only are they “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), like all other people inheriting Adam’s sin-nature, but they are already participating in the “second death” (Revelation 20:6). These are, from the context in Jude, those apostate teachers who turn “the grace of our God into lasciviousness, . . . denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). They have fully understood the true gospel, and willfully repudiated it, so that, for them, “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:26, see note; also see notes on Hebrews 6:4-6).

13 blackness of darkness. They are destined both for “everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41), in the ultimate lake of fire (Revelation 20:15), yet also for “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), “the mist of darkness . . . forever” (II Peter 2:17). How both can be true we do not know, nor do we need to know. Possibly the final hell is a dark nebula or a black hole, or perhaps the fires are merely symbolic of even worse realities. In any case, the eternal future of such false teachers is indescribably dismal. Great had been their opportunities; therefore great will be their judgment when they misuse them in such deadly ways.