1 ³ My friends, I was fully engaged in writing to you about our salvation—which is yours no less than ours—when it became urgently necessary to write at once and appeal to you to join the struggle in defence of the faith, the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all. 1 ⁴ It is in danger from certain persons who have wormed their way in, the very men whom Scripture long ago marked down for the doom they have incurred. They are the enemies of religion; they pervert the free favour of our God into licentiousness, disowning Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. Or: disowning our one and only Master, and Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 ⁵ You already know it all, but let me remind you how the Lord, Some witnesses read: Jesus (whuch might be understood as: Joshua). having once delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt, next time destroyed those who were guilty of unbelief. 1 ⁶ Remember too the angels, how some of them were not content to keep the dominion given to them but abandoned their proper home; and God has reserved them for judgement on the great Day, bound beneath the darkness in everlasting chains. 1 ⁷ Remember Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbouring towns; like the angels, they committed fornication and followed unnatural lusts; and they paid the penalty in eternal fire, an example for all to see.

1 ⁸ So too with these men today. Their dreams lead them to defile the body, to flout authority, and to insult celestial beings. 1 ^{9 [ Zch.3.2. ]} In contrast, when the archangel Michael was in debate with the devil, disputing the possession of Moses's body, he did not presume to condemn him in insulting words, Or: to charge him with blasphemy. but said, 'May the Lord rebuke you!'
1 ¹⁰ But these men pour abuse upon things they do not understand; the things they do understand, by instinct like brute beasts, prove their undoing. 1 ¹¹ Alas for them! They have gone the way of Cain; they have plunged into Balaam's error for pay; they have rebelled like Korah, and they share his doom.

1 ¹² These men are a blot on your love-feasts, where they eat and drink without reverence. They are shepherds who take care only of themselves. They are clouds carried away by the wind without giving rain, trees that in season bear no fruit, dead twice over and pulled up by the roots. 1 ¹³ They are fierce waves of the sea, foaming shameful deeds; they are stars that have wandered from their course, and the place for ever reserved for them is blackest darkness.

1 ¹⁴ It was to them that Enoch, the seventh in descent from Adam, directed his prophecy when he said: 'I saw the Lord come with his myriads of angels, 1 ¹⁵ to bring all men to judgement and to convict all the godless of all the godless deeds they had committed, and of all the defiant words which godless sinners had spoken against him.'
1 ¹⁶ They are a set of grumblers and malcontents. They follow their lusts. Big words come rolling from their lips, and they court favour to gain their ends.