Homilies on Joshua — Homily 18
Latin source: Origen, In Iesu Nave homiliae (Rufinus's Latin translation), from the public-domain critical text of W. A. Baehrens, GCS 30 = Origenes Werke VII (Leipzig, 1921); cross-checked against Migne PG 12. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the beginning of the division of the land, which was divided by Jesus, and how Caleb came to Jesus and asked Hebron of him.
[§1] Let us learn from the law, which describes for us of necessity the division of the land, said to have been made first through Moses and secondly also through Jesus — not that we should keep both, but that, learning the meaning of each, we may hold only that one which is handed down by Jesus our Lord. Now that land which is "beyond the Jordan" Moses distributed; but this one, which is the "holy land" and the "good land," "Jesus and the princes of the tribes of Israel" distributed. You see, then, that when that true inheritance of the "holy land" begins to be distributed by the Savior, the "princes of the tribes" also of the true and spiritual "Israel" will be taken up. And whom do we suppose to be the "princes" of our tribes, or the princes of the church, if not the holy Apostles, to whom the Savior says: "you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel"? Yet there is taken up for the division a priest as well, who is the hidden and mystical word of God; for so it says that "Jesus and Eleazar" came together to divide the land.[§2] And let us see who it is that first received an inheritance from Jesus. "Caleb," it says, "the son of Jephunneh." For he is the first to ask, and he asks with certain definite reasons and words, which are written down; and these words can also instruct us unto salvation. First of all, Caleb is interpreted as "heart." Who then is, as it were, a heart, if not the one who in all things devotes his effort to the understanding, who is said to be no other member of the body of the church than that which is more excellent in us, the heart — that is, one who conducts all things with reason and prudence, and so administers everything as though he were nothing other than a heart? Now Jephunneh, his father, is interpreted "conversion." This Caleb, then, is the son of conversion; and why, unless because, having been turned to God, he brings forth from himself such fruit that the heart begets a son? Everyone, therefore, who has leisure for divine perceptions and does all things prudently and rationally is a Caleb. He, first indeed instructed by Moses, but secondly by Jesus, whom he attended, says: "you know the word which the Lord spoke to Moses the man of God." "You know the word which the Lord spoke." For who else can "know the word which the Lord spoke to Moses" except Jesus alone? No one understood the law as Jesus taught it; for he himself taught and opened up all things, he himself revealed to Paul that "the law is spiritual." "As he spoke," it says, "concerning me and concerning you." "Concerning me," it says, "and concerning you Moses spoke." "Concerning you" — this is what the Lord said: "if you believed Moses, you would surely also believe me; for he wrote of me." But when he said "concerning me" — that is, concerning Caleb, who is the heart — it is certain that Moses wrote concerning the heart, seeing that he wrote everything prudently and wisely. He says therefore: "today I am as strong as I was strong then." For the holy man is likewise "strong" both in things present and in things past, both in the new and in the old, both in the gospels and in the law. This, then, is what he says, that "he is strong today" under Jesus "as he was then" under Moses, because in the mysteries of both testaments the watchful heart is strong.
[§3] But let us also see his petition, which "Caleb, the son of Jephunneh," asked first from Jesus. "I ask of you," he says, "this mountain, as the Lord said in that day." The holy man seeks nothing lowly or base, nothing that lies in sunken valleys, but he seeks a lofty "mountain," and a "mountain" in which there are "great and fortified cities." For it is written: "there are the Anakim, cities great and fortified." And he was asking for these things because he knew how to wage war, as it is written: "the wise man occupied fortified cities and destroyed the stronghold in which the impious trusted." Do you suppose that, when Solomon said these things, he wished to teach us this — that "the wise man captured cities and destroyed strongholds" built of stones? Or does it rather indicate that the city and the walls are the dogmas of the impious and the syllogisms of the philosophers, by which they construct all manner of impious things contrary to the divine law, which are observed among the pagans or the barbarians? But those things too must be reckoned among these, and to be "fortified cities" and set upon mountains, which the heretics place in their assertions from the Scriptures as though upon high mountains. These "cities," then, every "wise man" who preaches the word of truth "has destroyed," and he has overthrown the cities of falsehood with the battering-ram of truth, just as the Apostle Paul also said: "destroying reasonings and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." So then even now this most wise Caleb stands before Jesus and promises that "he is strong for war and ready for battle," and therefore he begs that there be permitted to him, as it were, the faculty of disputation, so that he may contend with the dialecticians of the world, with those who confirm falsehoods in place of truths, that he may refute and overcome them and overthrow all the things which they have constructed with their false assertions. And so at last, seeing his eagerness, "Jesus," it says, "blesses him" — namely, because he asks for and dares such things. But you too, if you are willing to give effort to your studies and to meditate prudently upon the law of God and to become a heart in the law of God, are able to overthrow those great and fortified cities, that is, the assertions of falsehood, so that you too may deserve to be blessed by Jesus and to receive Hebron from him. Now Hebron is interpreted "conjunction" or "wedlock." By this can perhaps be shown that thing — that the double cave purchased by the patriarch Abraham is there, in which the marriages of the fathers and their remains lie, that is, Abraham with Sarah, Isaac with Rebecca, Jacob with Leah. Caleb, therefore, deserved to receive the remains of the fathers in his inheritance, without doubt because through the wisdom which was in him, by which he flourished both under Moses and under Jesus, he had understood the meaning of that very conjunction and had perceived what the cause was that with Abraham only Sarah lay there, and that neither Hagar nor Keturah deserved to be joined to him; or what the cause was that with Jacob only Leah seemed to lie, and neither Rachel, who had been more greatly beloved, nor any of the concubines had been united to him in the tomb. He himself, therefore, the prudent and wise Caleb, takes his inheritance among the memorials of the fathers. To him "Jesus assigned Hebron, the mother-city of the nation of the Anakim, and it becomes his lot unto this present day." Would that to me too there might be given the lot of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that my God might become mine, as he became "the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob," in Christ Jesus our Lord, "to whom is glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen!"