”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. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.“
Jude 1:12-13 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jud.1.12-13.NIVMy take on these verses:
This is a very intense set of verses poetically describing the selfishness, spiritual lifelessness, and consequences of a life without Christ.
The opening sentence describes some who you probably know: the types who are superficially, selfishly nice partakers of your offerings but only seek to serve themselves.
The following sentences draw parallels between these types of people and their nature, compared to the things we see in nature.
Clouds without rain, someone who is perhaps Christian or human in form but not function, drifting through life without purpose nor serving others with rain (water being a source of life in many forms).
Speaking to the particular purpose of a fruit tree and referencing prior scriptures’ messages on spiritual fruit, this poetic line describes the spiritually dead ultimately dying in the physical sense—a double-death in not serving others with your gifts and then your life being uprooted.
Wild waves of the sea, chaotic tossing and crashing, flailing and destructive. This sounds like sinners to me, and whether the person realizes it or not, their shameful behavior is made visible like the foam the sea produces.
The last part of these verses really hits hard. Wandering is akin to being lost, and in being a lost star in space, blackest darkness is all they have known and will ever know, empty space is their eternity.