“Twice Dead” in Jude

What does it mean to be twice dead?
This is a phrase that shows up in the book of Jude and…nowhere else in the Bible.
Basically every verse in the book of Jude connects back to some concept or story previously in the Bible, but you get to verses 12 and 13 of Jude and they mention this thing of being twice dead. Talking about apostates, Jude says:
(Jude 12-13)
12 These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
Jude gets downright poetic here, doesn’t he? He has all these descriptive ways to describe people who join Christianity only to later reject it, but then he uses this one two-word phrase that has confused a lot of people: twice dead.
Unlike the rest of Jude, this is not a phrase that has ever been established anywhere else in Scripture.
The other phrase, however, you can find cross references for. And so I’ve been studying the book of Jude on my other podcast, Weird Stuff in the Bible. But as I come to verses 12 and 13 of Jude, I find this section to be thick with so much theological beauty that I wanted to take an extra bit of time to dig into it. But since it doesn’t quite fit with the theme of Weird Stuff in the Bible, it actually fits better with the theme of THIS podcast, I’m going to do it here.
So we’ll analyze and track down all of these phrases today on the Cross References podcast.

The Cross References Podcast with Luke Taylor: Episode 116

0:00 - Introduction
2:00 - The Poetic Language of Jude 12-13
3:40 - Blemishes at your love feasts
6:40 - Clouds without rain
8:00 - Autumn trees without fruit
9:55 - Foaming up their shame
12:50 - Wandering Stars
14:30 - Twice Dead
22:45 - A Second Death?
27:30 - Survivors Gather Here Monday
29:00 - Connections to Believers and the Cross

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