Jude 1:6

6. SECOND EXAMPLE. The fallen angels.

Which kept not their first estate The fall of Satan is implied in the words ascribed to our Saviour, John 8:44, that Satan “abode not in the truth,” and it is symbolically predicted by him in Luke 10:18, (where see note.) It seems shadowed also in Revelation 9:1; Revelation 12:3-17. And these carry us back by analogy to Isaiah 14:12:

“How art thou fallen from heaven,

O Lucifer, son of the morning!

How art thou cut down to the ground

Which didst weaken the nations!”

Here the downfall of the king of Babylon is described as the falling of Lucifer, (light-bearer,) or the morning star, in colourings so similar, that if we suppose the writer acquainted with the history of the fall of Satan it would seem to be borrowed from that event. And so Byron addressed Napoleon in similar allusive terms:

“Since he miscalled the Morning Star,

Nor god nor man hath fallen so far.”

But nowhere in Scripture is this fall so distinctly described as here. The wars of the Titans against the gods, and their being cast down by Jupiter to Tartarus, furnished by Greek mythology, seems to be the Gentile side of the history. Their first estate was their primitive angelic dignity in the regions of celestial light.

Left their own habitation Abandoned their princely residences, their divinely assigned sphere, in undutiful rebellion.

Hath reserved Instead of annihilating them.

In everlasting chains Not literally metallic chains, but limitations fixed upon them by divine power, excluding from the regions of glory, and fastening them in the regions of lower shade. See notes on Ephesians 4:10.

Darkness Murkiness, deepening in descending density. They are under this darkness because it overlies them, and though it excludes them not from the atmosphere of this earth, so but that they may roam among men, they are bound down to this lower stratum. As they left their own residence in light, God has assigned them another residence in darkness.

The judgment of the great day The Greek is without the definite article: unto judgment of great day; perhaps because the day became more definite after man became subjected to that same day of judgment; just as the final gehenna was “prepared for the devil and his angels,” Matthew 25:41; where see note. And so the demons of Matthew 8:24, feared that Jesus had come to torment them before the time.