Homilies on Psalms 36–38 — Homily 6 — Psalm 37 (LXX; MT 38), Homily I — "Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me"
Latin source: Origen's Greek homilies on Psalms 36, 37, and 38, surviving only in Rufinus of Aquileia's Latin translation (c. 401), from the reading text of J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Graeca 12 (Paris, 1862), cols. 1319–1410 (In Psalmos). This English translation is released into the public domain.On the thirty-seventh psalm [Ps 37 LXX = Ps 38 MT/Vulgate], which reads: "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, and so forth."
1. God, the Creator of human bodies, knew that the frailty of the human body would be such as could contract various sicknesses and would be liable to wounds and other infirmities; and therefore, providing beforehand for the sufferings to come, he also brought forth medicines out of the earth and handed down the discipline of medicine, so that if sickness should befall the body, healing would not be lacking. To what does this preface tend for us? Without doubt it is drawn back to the soul: since when the Creator of all had also fashioned the soul itself, he knew that it would be capable of vices, and on this account subject to sins and burdened by them. And therefore, just as he prepared medicines for the body from herbs compounded by art and discipline, so also he prepared medicines for the soul in those words which he sowed and scattered throughout the divine Scriptures: so that those who have been oppressed by some sickness, as soon as they feel the force of the disease and perceive the sting and pain of some wound — that is, when they see the soul bearing something contrary to its nature — may seek a fitting and suitable reasonable discipline which can heal them from the precepts of God. For he handed down also the industry of the medical art, whose chief physician is the Savior, who says of himself that "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." And he indeed was the chief physician who could cure every ailment and every infirmity; but his disciples Peter and Paul, and the prophets too, are physicians, and all those who after the apostles have been set in the Church, to whom the discipline of healing wounds has been entrusted, whom God willed to be physicians of souls in his Church, because our God does not will the death of the sinner, but awaits his repentance and his prayer. Next, this very psalm which has now been read shows us how, if perhaps we are at some time overtaken in sins, we ought to pray, and with what disposition, and to entreat the physician for our pains or infirmities. Whenever, then, the enemy has overtaken us and has wounded our soul with his fiery darts, this psalm first teaches us this: that after sin it is fitting to confess the sin, and to call the fault back to memory, so that through the remembrance of the fault the heart, goaded and stirred up over its own offense, may for the time restrain and recall itself, lest it commit anything of the kind again; and for this reason I think the psalm itself is inscribed, "A psalm of David, for remembrance." And what "for remembrance" means, it recounts through the whole body of the psalm itself. Let us all, therefore, who are sinners, see, if we have been found in some offense, what we ought to say or what we ought to do, so that, when we have learned these things in Sacred Scripture, we may also merit to obtain the healing of our wound. It would indeed have been good, so to speak, for the body of our soul always to continue in health, and, encompassed by the arms of God, to remain invulnerable against all the fiery darts of the malignant devil, to experience nothing of any ailment, nothing of any sickness, and for our inner man to take on nothing of vice or disease. But if through its own negligence and the sloth of the mind it has fallen into sin, let it recognize what follows upon this. To be reproved or corrected is a penalty of pain, a torment, and so grievous is it that even those who seem faithful and religious, if perhaps as men they have at some time fallen into some offense and are reproved, grow indignant against those who reprove them, and hate them. For they correct in order to amend. And this evil was the cause why even among the former people the prophets were held in hatred and were harassed with persecutions. This was the cause that had Isaiah sawn asunder, that forced Zechariah to be slaughtered between the temple and the altar, that had Jeremiah plunged into a pit of mire. And last of all, this was the cause that drove our Lord Jesus Christ to the cross. For all the crimes and outrages which we have enumerated above were committed for no other cause than that, while all men are unwilling to be cut back through the correction of the delinquent in the medicinal discipline, the people, impatient of the cure and of the remedy, blazed up to the destruction of the one healing them. Blessed, therefore, are those who are already called wise by Scripture itself, who, when they have offended, if they are reproved, do not hate those who reprove. For Scripture says thus: "Do not reprove the wicked, lest they hate you; reprove the wise man, and he will love you." Do you see how Scripture has called wise the man who is liable to correction, yet does not hate but rather loves the one who reproves? Such were those who were reproved by the Apostle, and, being refuted, did not hate those who reproved. Hence I too judge that the man in Corinth who had most grievously offended obtained mercy for this reason: that, having been corrected by the Apostle — and so bitterly corrected that he was cut off from the assembly of the Church — he nevertheless did not hold the one reproving him in hatred, but received the punishment patiently and bore it bravely. I judge that he even conceived a greater affection toward Paul, and toward all who had obeyed Paul's ordinances in his punishment. Hence Paul too revokes the sentence, and joins the one cast out back to the Church, and adds, saying: "Confirm your charity toward him." For he saw that after the punishment the man had preserved his charity; and therefore he said this so that, even after the sin, charity should not so much be bestowed upon him — for it was already present — but that the charity which was present should be confirmed by all. It is necessary, then, that he who sins be reproved: but since this correction, however useful it is, is grievous to us who are weaker, we avoid bearing it in the presence of all. And why do I say in the presence of all? Sometimes, when we are reproved, we do not even endure two witnesses to be present, but we blame the one reproving and say: You ought to have said what you wished to me alone, and not to have brought a blush upon me in the presence of many. We grieve, we are thrown into turmoil, we boil over, and we are tormented in the inner feelings of the soul. But if such is the correction by which we are reproved by men or in the presence of men, what shall we do if God reproves us, if God himself refutes and reproves us in wrath? We who cannot bear the anger of a reproving bishop, but receive it with indignation — how shall we endure that wrath which is said to be God's, reproving us? Knowing, therefore, that there are very many differences of reproving, and wishing, as a man, indeed to be reproved for his offenses, but fearing lest he be reproved with a heavier weight — that is, lest he be reproved in the wrath of the Lord — the Prophet says here also, just as he had said before in another psalm as well: "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath." And similarly he says what follows: "neither correct me in your anger." We ought, then, to say something also about correction, concerning which the Apostle teaches us generally, saying: "Every correction indeed for the present seems not to be of joy, but of sorrow; but afterward it will yield the most peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised by it." And observe even children, how, when they are corrected with blows by their tutors, or are roused by their teachers, they take it grievously indeed, and judge that pain to be the greatest evil which is inflicted upon them for the sake of instruction; and although they are not ignorant that their advancement lies in instructions and corrections of this kind, nevertheless they bear it grievously and impatiently. But if the instruction of children is of this kind, what ought we to think about ourselves who are old, what sort of instruction or correction do we reckon to be hanging over us — one that is inflicted neither by stewards nor by tutors? For Scripture indeed knows the tutor and the steward and the guardian of a little child: what, I say, ought we to suppose or feel, when our instruction and correction has been carried out by the Father of the household himself? Let us return again to the likeness of children. If a child is corrected by his tutor, it will not be necessary for him to know the correction of paternal severity, which is provoked by graver offenses and outrages. If a child is corrected by his teacher, the master will not be so severe as a father can be, if he has come to know grave offenses in his son. For if a father corrects for greater and graver sins — let the son's deed be so great that it has stirred the father to anger — without doubt, after tortures, after punishments, even the penalty of disinheritance is to be feared. If you have understood the likeness, pass over for me from the example to the reality, and understand about all of us the things that are said. All bishops and all presbyters and deacons instruct us, and in instructing they apply corrections and rebuke us with rather severe words. But there are times when we are instructed also by guardians and agents — that is, by those angels to whom the dispensing and governing of our soul has been entrusted: as there is described in a certain place the angel of repentance, who takes us up to be chastened, as the Shepherd sets forth, if indeed that little book seems to anyone worthy of acceptance. Meanwhile we men undergo various instructions that chasten us and correct us; yet we are not yet chastened by the Father of the household himself, but by the guardian angels, who are allotted the office of chastening and amending each one of us; and it is more bearable when we are corrected by one of these. So too at times our correction has been entrusted even to a tutor. For all who were under the law, since the law was our tutor in Christ, when they offended in the law were corrected by the tutor, when they were punished according to the law. For they were punished either when they were stoned, or when they suffered something of those things which Moses had written. None, therefore, of those of whom we spoke above was punished by the Father of the household himself. For the law was not the Father of the household, nor was the angel of repentance. But there are other sins for which the Father of the household himself punishes the sinner — namely him who, having overstepped the measure of his crimes, has stretched out beyond an affront to the creature to the impiety of his own wickedness. And yet no one but God alone knows who ought to be handed over to the guardians to be chastened, and when; or who is to be corrected by the agents; and when even one is to be subjected to the tutor, whose corrections are also lower than all of these — if indeed anyone is such as to provoke, so to speak, the very divine hand itself against himself for his own vengeance. If you have understood the things that have been said, if you have followed the deeper understanding, look now at how the Prophet pursues these things, when he says: Even if you correct me, O God, do not correct me in anger. But we neither wish to be corrected, nor do we endure the tutor admonishing us, nor do we willingly receive the corrections of the guardians or the agents; and therefore it is necessary that correction be brought upon us from the very wrath of God. For the Prophet says: "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither correct me in your anger."
2. But he who says this ought to bring forward some reason why he does not wish to be reproved in wrath, or to be corrected in anger. And let us see what that reason is, so that if we offend, we, learning this reason and doing according to what we are taught, may not fall into the vengeance of the one reproving in wrath, or of the one correcting in anger. "For," he says, "your arrows are fixed in me, and you have confirmed your hand upon me." The word of the Lord is like arrows. Indeed, the Savior too said thus: "He has set me as a chosen arrow, and in his quiver he has hidden me." He, therefore, who speaks the word of the Lord shoots arrows. And when he speaks correcting and chastening, he pierces the heart of the hearer with the dart of correction. He, therefore, who so receives the words of the Lord that from the words he hears his heart is pierced, and through the goad of the things that have been spoken he is roused to repentance — it is certain that in him the dart of God's word has not gone forth in vain, nor has it flown past, but in him all those arrows of God's words have been fixed. Indeed, thus he says also in a certain place: "Have you seen how Ahab was pricked to the heart?" Rightly, therefore, does the Prophet now also say: "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither correct me in your anger." For the cause that follows is worthy — the cause that ought to temper for him the correction of the Lord's wrath — since your arrows are fixed in me. For example, if now, out of all this multitude of hearers, there are some conscious to themselves of some sin — and would that indeed there were none! yet it is necessary that there be some conscious to themselves — and if these, upon hearing the things we speak, hear rightly and faithfully, and their heart is pricked by the darts of our words, and, pierced by such darts, they grieve and, turned to repentance, say: "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither correct me in your anger, for your arrows are fixed in me." But if one hearing these things is not pricked, but, as in a body already dead, so in his soul no arrow, no dart finds any feeling of pain, nor does he take up any remembrance of his sins — such a one is indeed worthy to be corrected by the goads of the Lord's wrath, and to be reproved by the corrections of his anger. For he cannot say to the Lord: "For your arrows are fixed in me." And would that all of you may hear us, pricked and goaded by the things that are said, and, turned to repentance, may say to the teacher: For your arrows are fixed in me, and while you chasten us with the word of God, while you scourge, while you strike us in the inner parts of the conscience: "You have confirmed your hand upon me." For the tutor confirms his hand upon children while he scourges and amends, and the hands are confirmed when the blows are not inflicted negligently or lightly. So too can one say to the Lord, when he has sent arrows — but through whomever he wishes to send the arrows of his words — that "you have confirmed your hand upon me." For when the hand of the Lord is present, which sends forth the darts of words and fixes the arrows in the soul of the hearers, rightly does he say to the Lord that "you have confirmed your hand upon me: nor is there health in my flesh in the face of your anger." Therefore I ask not to experience the power of your anger itself, since, receiving only its judgment and in a certain way seeing only its face, which is formed from the words of divine Scripture alone, I already grieve in my whole body and am thrown into confusion: nor is there any health in my flesh, nor peace in my bones — merely because I seemed to feel or see the face of your anger from the holy Scriptures, yet not the anger itself. And if from this alone the things I suffer are such, for this reason I pray that I may not suffer the anger itself. See, then, whether these things are not plainly said in that which he says: "And you have confirmed your hand upon me; nor is there health in my flesh in the face of your anger." He could have said, from your anger, but now he says, "from the face of your anger." For if he had said, from your anger, that would without doubt have been superfluous which he said above: "Correct me not in your anger." But now he said: "There is no health in my flesh in the face of your anger." Since indeed the face of your anger alone — that is, the very consideration of your indignation — has so terrified me and turned me, that there ought now to be no place in me for your anger: "Nor is there health in my flesh in the face of your anger." Concerning the man who had sinned at Corinth, the Apostle declared, saying: "To deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." Is it to be supposed that he wished the man whom he said ought to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh to become wicked? Rather, on the contrary, it is apparent that for the man's salvation he delivered his flesh to destruction. Indeed, he adds, saying: "I have delivered such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord," showing that the spirit cannot be saved unless the flesh be delivered to destruction. What, then, the destruction of the flesh is, hear. For what has been destroyed is without doubt dead. But the flesh lives in the sinner; the flesh is dead in the righteous man. On account of which the righteous also say: "Always carrying about the mortification of Jesus Christ in our body, that the life of Jesus Christ also may be made manifest in our mortal flesh." And again we have received a command, saying: "Mortify your members which are upon the earth." And blessed is he who has died to sin, according to what has been said: "The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit lives as life because of justification." To be delivered, then, to the destruction of the flesh is such that the carnal sense may die in us, and the desire of the flesh may not live in it. For from the fact that the sense of the flesh dies, so that we may not be wise according to the flesh, the spirit is made safe. Otherwise, while the sense of the flesh lives in us, and the flesh lives, we cannot be wise about spiritual things. In this way, then, the Apostle delivered to the destruction of the flesh the man who had lived according to the flesh, so that, the sense of the flesh being dead, the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord. If you have understood the apostolic word, let us return to what was proposed. Would that in my body, whenever I offend, and the offense comes from the sense of the flesh, the destruction of the flesh might be brought upon it, so that the spirit might be saved. For if the flesh is weakened, without doubt the advancing weakness reaches even to the mortification of the flesh: and then it is that it is rightly said that "there is no health in my flesh." But if the flesh is indeed not weakened, but returns to its own health — that is, so that it is wise about the things of the flesh and desires evil — then there is health in the flesh, which is by no means good for the spirit. This man, then, who is reproved, and who refuses to be reproved through the wrath of the Lord and to be corrected by his anger, shows the most just causes of this excuse, asserting that he is pierced by the arrows of the words of God, and so disturbed and terrified by the face of the Lord's anger alone, that there remains no health at all in his flesh — that is, no further desire of sinning. I remember that once, discoursing on that chapter of the Gospel in which it is written: "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak," I perceived something of this kind: that before our Savior came to the cross and crucified the flesh and made it die — before it was perfectly mortified — he first said that his flesh was weak; and as long as the flesh was indeed weak, he said the spirit was willing; but when he delivers it to the cross and consummates it with perfect death, then he testifies that the spirit is no longer willing, but placed in the hands of the Father. And these things, describing them in himself, he offered as an example for our instruction. For on our account and for us he was weak. Therefore let us consider ourselves, whether our flesh is weak, whether it is not dissolved by delights and luxury — for this vicious health is at hand for it: see whether by daily abstinence the flesh is made weak, whether by continence the desires are restrained, lust is suppressed, the vices are quieted: then, even if it is not yet dead, nevertheless there is no health in your flesh, but even your members are for the time mortified upon the earth. And what is it that makes there be no health in the flesh? If we feel the face of the anger of God. For when we remember the anger of God, and bring before our eyes his countenance from the very contemplation of him — which for this reason has been called the face of anger — the flesh, disturbed and terrified, is weakened and grows faint.
3. "There is no peace in my bones in the face of my sins." He too who has sinned, and after the sin remembers that he has sinned, ought to say these things, just as David himself said in the fiftieth psalm: "And my sin is ever before me." There are certain people who, when they have sinned, are utterly secure, and do not think about their sin, nor does it come to their senses what evil they have done, but they live as though they had committed nothing at all: these, therefore, cannot say that "my sin is ever before me." But when, after the deed, one is consumed and afflicted for his offense, and is driven by the goads of conscience, is gnawed without intermission and assailed by hidden refutations, such a one rightly says: "There is no peace in my bones in the face of my sins." There is indeed a certain face even of sins, and, so to speak, a certain color and appearance by which the things once committed are wont to be remembered and recognized. But when we have set our sins before the eyes of our heart, and, gazing upon each one, recognizing them we blush, and, being made penitent, we repent, then, disturbed and terrified, we rightly say that we do not have peace in our bones in the face of our sins.
4. Let him also add these things who repents for his sins, and let him say: "For my iniquities have risen above my head; like a heavy burden they have been made heavy upon me." For those who neither grieve nor are burdened for their sins, but are secure and float about in delights, cannot say these things, nor do they feel that their iniquities indeed grow and go beyond the height of their own head, while they themselves shrink and are reduced to nothing; and therefore they cannot say: "For my iniquities have risen above my head; like a heavy burden they have been made heavy upon me." For how can those say it who not only take delight in their offenses, but even, exulting, parade their evils? — for whom indeed their sin becomes not a burden, but a pleasure. It is not for those, then, to say these things, but for those to whom lust has already become foul, to whom vices have become horrible, by whom at last all the pleasure of present gratifications has been discovered to be worth nothing, since afterward it will be altogether nothing. These are they who can also say what follows: "for my scars have festered and rotted." "Do not," says the Savior, "cast your pearls before swine," there calling swine those who take delight in the stenches of their sins, who seek out every stench as a most sweet odor. Consider, then, the sinner who takes delight in his sins and is glad in his evils: since he too wallows in stinking dung, and perceives no feeling of his own stench, which is given off from the dung of sin, but takes delight as though in the highest pleasures and most pleasing delights. But if it should happen to this man at some time to lay aside the sense and smell of swine and to receive the sense of the word of God, so that he can feel the stench of his own sins: immediately, turned to repentance and seeking amendment, he becomes impatient of his own stench, crying out to the heavenly physician, and, showing the scars of his rotted wounds, he says: "My scars have festered and rotted in the face of my folly." And rightly here has he named sin folly. For no wise man ever commits it.
5. "I have been afflicted with miseries and bowed down even to the end." But you may sometimes see the man who has sinned mourning and saddened with the sorrow that is according to the world; for the sorrow that is according to God works repentance unto stable salvation. But this man says that I have been afflicted with miseries and bowed down even to the end. For this reason perhaps the holy Apostle himself, knowing that he had once sinned, says: "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" For he too sinned when he persecuted the Church of God, on account of which he says: "I am not worthy to be called an apostle." I have been afflicted with miseries, then, he says. He does not say, I am still afflicted. For if my sins have now passed away, I have been afflicted with miseries; but if they remain, and I am conversant in them, I am still afflicted with miseries: "With miseries," then, he says, "I have been afflicted, and I am bowed down even to the end." If you should see the man who has sinned unable to look up to heaven, but with his body bent and the countenance not only of his body but also of his soul sunk to the ground, and twisting his neck like a hoop, you understand how one is bowed down even to the end. But if you wish also through examples to know how each one is bowed down by his sins, so that he cannot look up nor lift his eyes to heaven, gaze upon that publican who in the Gospel, having entered the temple and standing afar off, not daring to lift his eyes to heaven, but striking his breast and confessing his sins, said: "God, be merciful to me a sinner." To this man surely it is fitting to say, "I am bowed down even to the end, and I went about all the day saddened." And in saying this, he sets forth, as it were, the very disposition and soul of the penitent, who says: From the time I sinned, I have never laughed, I have never been glad, I have never indulged myself in anything of enjoyment, but I have always been in mourning, always in repentance, always in grief. Such is that which is enjoined in the Gospel, when the Lord says: Blessed are they that mourn, and blessed are they that weep. But on the contrary, if anyone is a sinner and liable to many evils, and this man, pricked by no goad of his own outrages, moreover even laughs and is glad and merry, and is not driven in any respect by the goads of conscience, see whether to this man it is not fitting to say the things that are written: "Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and lament."
6. "All the day I went about saddened, for my loins are filled with illusions." In the loins or in the reins the receptacle of human seed is said to be; whereby that kind of sin is indicated which is carried out through lust. For its work is that thing which the Apostle designated among the foremost sacrileges, saying: "Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid!" When, therefore, one flows more inclinedly and incontinently into wantonness of this kind, then his loins, or reins, are asserted to be filled with illusions. For it is an illusion of the devil deluding a man and provoking the incontinence of this kind of sin. It is no wonder, then, if the loins of sinful men are filled with illusions, since Job too speaks thus of the dragon, who is understood to be the devil: "All his strength is in the loins, and his power in the navel of his belly." The strength of the devil, then, is chiefly about the loins of man, whence fornication and adulteries proceed, whence the corruption of boys, whence all filth is generated. So too, indeed, the fault of women is about the navel of the belly, which he wished to indicate by a more decent expression, in both of which he designates the strength and power of the dragon, the devil, to be. "And there is no health in my flesh." In this he shows his advancement, and indicates that he is near to the mortification of the flesh and its destruction. For this reason he here repeats this a second time, so as to declare that a remedy has already been applied to the troubles of temptations. "I have been afflicted and humbled exceedingly." On the festivals of the Lord we are commanded to eat the bread of affliction, and on those very festivals it is said that a man is to humble his soul; and when the festival of propitiation is proclaimed, it is said: "Humble your souls." Since, therefore, he who repents for his offenses afflicts and humbles himself, just as that publican too of whom we spoke above, for this reason he consequently says, in that he recognizes that he repents from the heart, beseeching that he be not reproved in the Lord's wrath, nor corrected in his anger, from this which he says: "I have been afflicted and humbled exceedingly." For not only have I been afflicted, nor only have I been humbled, he says, but I have been exceedingly afflicted, and I have been exceedingly humbled. As, for example, I might say: if some man rich according to the world, set in great abundance, should here suddenly fall and be reduced to the utmost destitution, driven also from house and homeland, banished to islands and crags, and should drag out a squalid and unhappy life in solitude, and then thereupon, remembering his homeland and parents, his nobility, his family, the substance of his goods, the abundance of his riches, and that whole life which he had lived in delights — with what lamentations, with what bellowings will he recall the remembrance of his former blessedness, so that it is a greater punishment for him to remember what he has lost than to suffer what he now endures? After the likeness of this example, look for me also at the man who has passed his life in sobriety and chastity and righteousness, who was well conscious to himself in his deeds: if this man should fall from his homeland — that is, from the Church — and be driven to a certain island and to bristling crags, which is the seat of sin, and be rolled down from his faculties and riches which were his in all his good works, and should see himself set in the utmost poverty — for all his acts of righteousness which he did shall not be remembered because of his sin — if, then, he should see himself in such circumstances, with what groanings, and with what roarings will he cry out, saying: "I roared from the groaning of my heart. O Lord, all my desire is before you, and my groaning is not hidden from you." All things, then, from the time I offended, whether I coveted worldly concupiscence, or committed something else, all I bring forth before you, and in my prayers I set them in your sight. "And my groaning is not hidden from you." For you know that I always groan. "My heart is troubled, and my strength has forsaken me." Do you see, O Lord, my heart, for it is troubled because of my sins. And consequently I entreat that I be not reproved in wrath, nor corrected in anger. But if my strength has forsaken me, without doubt I was once strong, and my manner of life was good, but afterward I fell, since "my strength has forsaken me, and the light of my eyes is not with me." This seems to be the voice of one who, after illumination, after the handing down of doctrine, after the recognition of the truth, has fallen into darkness. Let us, then, not suffer the same things, but rather, that our light may always be in us, and that, doing the works of light, we may have confidence as sons of light in Christ Jesus, let us always pray, and let us unceasingly beseech God the Father, to whom be glory and power unto the ages of ages. Amen.