The Strange Connection Between Jude 6, Sodom, and the Angels
Few phrases in Jude have generated more confusion than the expression traditionally rendered “strange flesh” in Jude 7. Few phrases in Jude have generated more confusion than the expression traditionally rendered “strange flesh” in Jude 7. The Greek phrase is sarkos heteras, literally “other flesh” or “different flesh.” While several modern translations render the expression more generally as “unnatural desire” or similar language, those translations can obscure an important feature of Jude’s wording. Jude places the phrase immediately after his description of angels who abandoned their proper place and are now kept for judgment. That sequence raises a larger question: is Jude intentionally connecting the sin of Sodom with the transgression of rebellious heavenly beings?
The strongest case does not come from speculation about what Jude might have written. It comes from the Greek words he actually used, the grammar that links verses 6 and 7, the identity of the visitors in Genesis 19, and the wider literary relationship between Jude, 2 Peter, and ancient Jewish traditions about the angels who sinned. Taken together, the evidence supports a deliberate boundary-crossing parallel: in one story heavenly beings cross into the human realm; in the other, humans attempt to violate beings from the heavenly realm.
That conclusion should still be stated carefully. Jude 7 does not by itself prove every detail of the Watcher interpretation of Genesis 6. But it is much more difficult to isolate Jude 7 from Jude 6 than many modern readings allow.
Jude 6: Angels Who Abandoned Their Proper Place
Jude begins the immediate context by reminding his readers of a group of angels who violated the order assigned to them. He writes that the angels “did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling” and that God has kept them under restraint until the final judgment (Jude 6). Two Greek terms are especially important.
The first is archē, a word that can denote a beginning, rule, domain, or sphere of authority depending on context. The second is oikētērion, “dwelling” or “habitation.” The same noun appears elsewhere in the New Testament only in 2 Corinthians 5:2, where Paul speaks of a heavenly dwelling. Jude’s emphasis is therefore not simply that these angels committed an unspecified sin. They failed to remain within the order or habitation assigned to them.
Jude also describes their punishment as unusually severe. They are not merely rebuked. They are being kept in darkness for judgment. That feature closely resembles 2 Peter 2:4, where angels who sinned are cast into Tartarus and held for judgment. The two passages appear to preserve the same basic tradition of a particular angelic transgression followed by confinement.
Why Jude 7 Is Grammatically Connected to Jude 6
The next verse begins with Sodom and Gomorrah, but Jude does not introduce them as an unrelated example. The Greek text says that Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities acted ton homoion tropon toutois — “in a similar manner to these.” The demonstrative toutois, “these,” naturally points backward to the angels of verse 6. This is one of the most important grammatical observations in the passage.
The surrounding cities in verse 7 are grammatically feminine, while toutois is masculine or neuter plural. The nearest suitable plural antecedent is therefore the angels of verse 6. The most natural reading is that Jude intends his readers to compare the behavior of Sodom with the behavior of those angels. The comparison does not mean every detail of the two events is identical. It means Jude sees a meaningful similarity between them.
That similarity is immediately explained through sexual transgression and the pursuit of “other” or “different” flesh. Jude is not merely stacking examples of generic wickedness. He is arranging examples so that one helps interpret the other.
What Does Sarkos Heteras Mean?
The expression behind the traditional phrase “strange flesh” is sarkos heteras. Sarkos is the genitive form of sarx, “flesh.” Heteras is the genitive feminine form of heteros, meaning “other,” “another,” or “different.” A wooden translation would therefore be “other flesh” or “different flesh.”
The word heteros should not be pressed beyond what Greek usage can bear. In Koine Greek, the distinction between heteros and allos is not so rigid that an entire doctrine can be built upon the idea that heteros must always mean “another of a different species.” The safer argument is simpler: Jude deliberately says that Sodom pursued flesh that was other than, or outside, what was proper to them. The surrounding context must tell us what makes that flesh “other.”
That is where Genesis 19 becomes decisive. The visitors whom the men of Sodom attempted to seize are not left unidentified. Genesis explicitly introduces them as angels.
The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. — Genesis 19:1
Later, the men of the city surround Lot’s house and demand that the visitors be brought out to them for sexual violation (Genesis 19:4–5). Jude therefore has a clear biblical basis for describing their desire as a pursuit of “other flesh”: the intended victims were angelic visitors appearing in human form.
The Reversed Pattern: Genesis 6 and Genesis 19
When Jude 6 and 7 are read together, a striking reversal appears. In the supernatural interpretation of Genesis 6, heavenly beings cross a God-established boundary and pursue human women. In Genesis 19, human beings attempt to violate heavenly visitors. The direction is reversed, but the underlying pattern is similar: creatures reach across an appointed boundary in sexual rebellion.
This explains why Jude can place the two examples side by side. The angels “left their proper dwelling.” Sodom then acted “in a similar manner to these” and pursued “other flesh.” Both examples concern more than sexual desire in the abstract. They concern desire that refuses a boundary established by God.
This does not require denying the other sins of Sodom. Genesis and the Prophets portray the city as violent, arrogant, oppressive, sexually corrupt, and hostile to the vulnerable. Jude chooses one feature of the Genesis 19 episode for his argument because it parallels the angelic transgression he has just mentioned.
What This Argument Does — and Does Not — Prove
A careful argument must distinguish between what the text establishes and what it merely supports. Jude 6 clearly speaks of angels who abandoned their proper domain or dwelling. Jude 7 clearly links Sodom to the preceding example with language of similarity. Jude 7 also clearly speaks of pursuing “other flesh,” and Genesis 19 clearly identifies the visitors as angels. Those observations are textual facts.
From those facts, it is reasonable to infer that Jude is drawing a boundary-crossing parallel between the angelic sin and the attempted violation at Sodom. That inference strongly supports the ancient Jewish reading of Genesis 6 in which the sons of God were heavenly beings who transgressed with human women.
What Jude does not do is explicitly write, “The angels of Jude 6 are the sons of God in Genesis 6.” The connection is cumulative rather than dependent on a single sentence. Likewise, the case should not be built by inventing a Greek phrase Jude could supposedly have used if he meant something else. Exegesis is strongest when it rests on Jude’s actual wording, syntax, literary sequence, and biblical allusions.
2 Peter Preserves the Same Pattern
The parallel passage in 2 Peter strengthens the case. Peter moves from “angels when they sinned” to the ancient world of Noah and then to Sodom and Gomorrah (2 Peter 2:4–6). Jude likewise places the sinning angels and Sodom in immediate sequence. Scholars debate the precise literary relationship between Jude and 2 Peter, but the close relationship between the two texts is widely recognized.
The sequence matters because 2 Peter locates the angelic judgment immediately beside the world of Noah. Genesis 6 is the one Old Testament episode immediately before the Flood in which a group identified as the “sons of God” crosses into the human realm. When Peter’s sequence is placed beside Jude’s description of angels abandoning their proper dwelling, the traditional Watcher interpretation becomes difficult to dismiss as a late invention.
The Ancient Jewish Background
Jude’s readers also lived in a Jewish world in which the supernatural interpretation of Genesis 6 was already well known. First Enoch describes heavenly Watchers who leave their proper place, take human wives, produce giant offspring, and are subsequently bound for judgment. Jubilees preserves a similar reading. These writings are not Scripture and should not be treated as inspired authorities. Their value is historical: they show how Jewish interpreters before and around the time of the New Testament understood Genesis 6.
Jude’s own letter demonstrates familiarity with this world of tradition. Later in the epistle he cites material corresponding to 1 Enoch 1:9 (Jude 14–15). That does not mean Jude canonized the entire book of 1 Enoch. It does mean the Enochic Watcher tradition formed part of the conceptual world shared by Jude and at least some of his readers.
Against that background, Jude 6–7 reads naturally. Rebellious angels abandoned their appointed place and came under judgment; Sodom then acted in a comparable manner by pursuing flesh outside its proper order. The ancient Jewish interpretation does not create the argument, but it helps explain why Jude could state it so briefly without stopping to define every term.
So What Does “Strange Flesh” Mean?
In Jude 7, “strange flesh” is best understood as “other” or “different flesh” pursued in a context where Jude has just described angels abandoning their appointed heavenly order. Because Genesis 19 identifies the visitors in Sodom as angels, the phrase most naturally points to the attempted sexual violation of beings who did not belong to the human order of those pursuing them.
The point is not that Jude ignores ordinary sexual immorality. He explicitly names sexual immorality. The point is that he adds a further description: Sodom pursued “other flesh,” and he says the cities acted in a manner comparable to the angels of verse 6. Jude’s argument is therefore more specific than a generic condemnation of lust. It is a warning about rebellion that refuses the boundaries established by the Creator.
Read alongside Genesis 6, Genesis 19, 2 Peter 2, and the ancient Jewish Watcher tradition, Jude 6–7 becomes one of the most important New Testament witnesses to the supernatural reading of the rebellion before the Flood. It does not answer every question surrounding Genesis 6, but it makes one thing difficult to deny: Jude expected his readers to see a connection between the sin of rebellious angels and the transgressive desire of Sodom.
Continue the Study
Jude’s brief warning sits inside a much larger biblical network involving the sons of God, the Watchers, the Nephilim, Tartarus, the spirits of the dead, and Christ’s victory over rebellious powers. The Bible You Thought You Knew: Recovering the Supernatural Narrative of the Scriptures follows those connections from Genesis through the New Testament and places them within the larger story of redemption.
Explore the book: The Bible You Thought You Knew by Jonathan Lugo
Sources & Further Reading
Bauckham, Richard J. Jude, 2 Peter. Word Biblical Commentary 50. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983.
Green, Gene L. Jude and 2 Peter. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.
Schreiner, Thomas R. 1, 2 Peter, Jude. New American Commentary 37. Nashville: B&H, 2003.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., and James C. VanderKam. 1 Enoch: A New Translation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004.
Stuckenbruck, Loren T. The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014.
Bauer, Walter, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. See entries for heteros, oikētērion, and ekporneuō.
Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th revised edition (NA28), Jude 6–7.
Genesis 6:1–4; Genesis 19:1–11; Jude 5–7, 14–15; 2 Peter 2:4–6.
