QUESTION
I’m having trouble with this verse, Jude 1:11, specifically with the dative τῇ πλάνῃ and the genitive τοῦ μισθοῦ. I would have translated it “The wages of Baalam” but the NASB somehow puts the dative with Baalam for “the error of Baalam”.
Jude 1:11 (NA27 with Mounce-Koivisto Morphology)
" 11 οὐαὶ αὐτοῖς, ὅτι τῇ ὁδῷ τοῦ Κάϊν ἐπορεύθησαν καὶ τῇ πλάνῃ τοῦ Βαλαὰμ μισθοῦ ἐξεχύθησαν καὶ τῇ ἀντιλογίᾳ τοῦ Κόρε ἀπώλοντο."
(NASB) Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah
RESPONSE
Four genitives to sort out and connect. This is a very structured sentence with three clauses, each starting with an articular dative and its trailing articular genitive, according to the canon of Apollonius. τῇ ὁδῷ τοῦ Κάϊν, καὶ τῇ πλάνῃ τοῦ Βαλαὰμ, καὶ τῇ ἀντιλογίᾳ τοῦ Κόρε. Anarthrous genitives like μισθοῦ do not go with articular heads, ordinarily, and genitives do not have genitives, ordinarily This gives an immediate clue that μισθοῦ is adverbial, not a genitive modifier of a noun.
The extra genitive is the anarthrous genitive μισθοῦ which means for pay. Although adverbial nouns are generally dative (60%), the Greeks knew that the adverbial idiom of price was genitive.
—Dennis Kenaga