Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 2 — Psalm 15 (LXX; MT 16), Homily II: vv. 7–11
Greek source: Origen's homilies on the Psalms, preserved in a single manuscript (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. graec. 314, 12th century), from the reading text of L. Perrone et al. (eds.), Die neuen Psalmenhomilien. Eine kritische Edition des Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, Origenes Werke XIII (GCS NF 19; Berlin, 2015), pp. 91–112. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the 15th Psalm, Homily 2
1. Each of the apostles, taken by himself, is a sacred witness, adorned with the Spirit of Christ, whenever he interprets something of the old Scripture, and above all when he refers it to Christ. For Christ Jesus accredited the apostles, and so did God in Christ Jesus. But if "at the mouth of two witnesses and of three every word shall be established", then whenever two apostles, or even three, interpret a Scripture, what is said will seem all the more trustworthy, since it is attested by three such great witnesses. But in the case of this psalm we have found something more novel: something from what was read out of the psalm has been interpreted not by two and three witnesses only. For it is written in the Acts of the Apostles that when Peter, with the eleven apostles, lifted up his voice, he also made use of the words "I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced, and moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption". And he says that David said these things, foreseeing them in the Spirit concerning the Christ. And David, having served the will of God in his own generation, saw corruption; but he whom God raised up "did not see corruption", and moreover "his soul was not abandoned to Hades." See, then, how many witnesses have borne witness that this psalm is spoken from the person of Christ. For the twelve apostles of Christ have said this by the one Spirit and with one voice harmonizing as of a choir. And if I say twelve, I mean with Judas removed and Matthias enrolled in place of Judas. For this too is written in the Acts of the Apostles.
Now even to refer to the Savior the passages contained here which the apostles used, and to expound them word for word with a firm grasp by our own means, is not at all easy. But to clarify the whole psalm and fit it word for word to itself, demonstrating that the person is that of the Savior, and to teach what is said in a manner worthy of the Savior, seems to me to require the Savior himself. Only so could we say, with the Lord himself speaking in us, the words "Or do you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me?" If, then, at other times too your prayers and your requests to God for good things have helped us to clarify Scripture, let them help now also. Then God may supply a word to us who thirst and who ask for light on matters that need elucidation. And we, through your prayers, even if we did not understand before, now at least, being illumined by the Word, will understand and will set forth what is to be examined in the psalm.
2. Now the beginning of today's reading was: "I will bless the Lord who gave me understanding". It is Christ who speaks, understood according to his humanity. For in the Scriptures you distinguish when it says "Lord," meaning the one understood according to the divinity, and when it says "Christ," meaning the one understood according to the humanity. Now the things in the psalm at present are spoken from the person of Christ understood according to his humanity. For the words "my flesh will dwell in hope" are the voice of the man, and "you will not abandon my soul to Hades" is the voice of one who has a soul. But whenever you find "Before the sun his name endures in heaven, and before the moon for generations of generations; and he will come down like rain upon a fleece and like drops dripping upon the earth", and such things said of him in glorification, understand his divinity.
Whether according to "the firstborn of all creation", or according to his soul that existed before the body, now too "I will bless", he says, "the Lord", that is, the Father, "who gave me understanding". Who is it that says these things, if not the man who is prophesied, as I said before? Concerning him Isaiah also says: "A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding". If the spirit of understanding has rested upon the one from the root of Jesse, "born of the seed of David according to the flesh", then rightly does the one born of the seed of David according to the flesh say "I will bless the Lord who gave me understanding". For "the firstborn of all creation", the "spirit of counsel and strength", was united to the Savior understood according to his humanity, born "of the seed of David according to the flesh". And so, perceiving the union, he says "I will bless the Lord who gave me understanding".
3. The next utterance is his too, and it needs grace from God to be made clear. It says: "And moreover, even until night my kidneys instructed me". How the "kidneys" of Christ instruct him is not easy to explain. And granted that his kidneys instruct him, what is meant by "and even until night"? For his kidneys do not simply instruct him; rather, "until night his kidneys instruct him." Now I do not know of the kidneys being taken, by those outside the word, to refer to matters of understanding or shrewdness in the way they are in Scripture. For in Scripture God, when searching out hidden things, searches hearts and kidneys. And perhaps he searches the kidneys when he investigates and examines what is still stored up in the soul like seed and has not yet risen up to the heart.
These kidneys, then, are not the bodily ones. They are named by analogy with the heart (for not even when a heart is called pure, and he who is pure in heart is called blessed, must we understand what is pronounced blessed as the bodily organ, which we see even in irrational animals). These kidneys, I say, which hold the roots and beginnings of thoughts in proportion to the purity of the heart, and with which the one who says "you will not abandon my soul to Hades" came to dwell among us, instruct the soul of Jesus. It is as if I were saying the analogous thing about a human soul too. Such a soul holds in the kidneys the thoughts and the seeds of reasonings before they rise up to the heart, existing within beforehand in potency, whether the worse ones — for whoever has sinned has done evil from that time — or the better ones, since for some the good too seems to have come into being from that time.
If, then, you understand what I have taken up concerning the kidneys, see the soul of Jesus descending from heaven. For "no one", you see, "has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven": not the Son of God, not "the firstborn of all creation", but "the Son of Man". Look, I pray you, upon that soul, which "did not count being equal to God a thing to be grasped, but emptied itself, taking the form of a servant". Understand, I pray you, this soul, and see it storing up doctrines and thoughts and laying them up not in the heart but in the kidneys, so that from the kidneys they may rise up to the heart. See, I pray you, the soul of Jesus coming with kidneys that are not bodily, holding what instructs and what turns back. These things came to dwell together with that soul, and through them he knew no sin, and did not sin, and did not speak sin, though he was a man.
I do not marvel if someone refers what is written about the Savior's not having sinned to "the firstborn of all creation". For one who marvels at such a thing is like one who marvels that God, who made heaven and earth, did not sin, not knowing that God is not of a nature to sin. So too the Word of God is not of a nature to sin; "the firstborn of all creation" cannot sin. But the praise for Jesus' not sinning is referred to the man, "who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth".
And if it is said, "Him who knew no sin he made sin for us", do not hear it as said of "the firstborn of all creation", but understand the one who knew no sin to be the soul of Jesus.
For all of us have known sin, we who say mystically: "In lawlessnesses I was conceived, and in sins my mother conceived me", and in what kind of sins I do not know. Him, then, "who knew no sin, he made sin for us", namely the Father, by sending him from heaven to earth for our sake. And he came having on his kidneys the things that instruct him and remind him. They instruct him not simply, but as it stands in Scripture: "until night my kidneys instructed me". "Night" here means this night of our life. For it is night here, the night of which it is said: "The night is far advanced, and the day has drawn near; let us walk becomingly as in the day". And since it is night, this life is darkness. For see "that our wrestling is not against blood and flesh but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places".
He says, then, that "even until night my kidneys instructed me". Not only did they instruct me in what was needful and remind me, but even when I had come into the night of this age, into the darkness, "my kidneys instructed me; I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken". It is the human soul of Jesus that says "I foresaw the Lord before me". Which "Lord"? Does it mean the Father, or "the firstborn of all the creation", who is always present to it? But why do I say "present"? United, rather, so that the man is no longer one and "the firstborn of all creation" another. If you stumble at this being united, hear a consolation that heals your stumbling, an apostolic consolation: "he who is joined to the Lord" is no longer two, but "is one spirit". Then, while "he who" on the one hand "is joined to the Lord is one spirit", do you not want the soul that does not sin, that descended willingly, that did not count being equal to God a thing to be grasped, to have become one spirit and to have become one with "the firstborn of all creation"? "I foresaw", then, my "Lord", since "my kidneys instructed me until night".
4. "I foresaw the Lord before me always": not at one time yes and at another time no, but "always before me", "for he is at my right hand". For in the more honorable, right-hand place of the soul the one who helps was always present: the Father was present, or "the firstborn of all creation" was present, united to the soul, so that the soul might say "that I may not be shaken". It is as though, had it not foreseen "the Lord before it always, since at the right hand" he is, it would even have been shaken. For as far as the nature of the soul goes, it can be shaken.
Some people, not having understood the true account of the soul, say that the soul is something intermediate, while the body belongs to the things below and the spirit to the things above. And they say that certain people are psychic (ψυχικοί). They do not see that, on a different account from the one we have often given, all human beings first become psychic because of the soul. After becoming psychic because of the soul, being psychic before sin and before right action, they then (to speak more boldly) become earthly through sin and spiritual through virtue. So the psychic man is not yet earthly, for by falling he becomes earthly; and the psychic man is not yet spiritual, for by acting rightly he becomes spiritual.
"I foresaw", then, "the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad", since "my kidneys instructed me until night", since "I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand" always, "that I may not be shaken". "Therefore my heart was glad", therefore "my tongue rejoiced", therefore "my glory rejoiced". It is as though, had the things said before not been so, the things that follow would not have come about.
But whenever you hear Jesus saying these things, hear also Paul enjoining you: "Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ". Of whom must I become an imitator? Of "the firstborn of all creation", the wisdom, the Word, the truth? Or am I enjoined, being a man, to become an imitator of the man Jesus, so that I may imitate his humanity? I do not say that it is impossible to imitate his divinity. For as I ascend I make progress, and by the grace of God I can arrive even at imitating the divinity of Christ, if indeed it is set before us to imitate the divinity of Christ and of the God of the universe. For become, he says, "perfect as your Father who is in heaven is perfect", and "you shall be holy, because I am holy, the Lord your God"; and again, you shall be perfect "before the Lord your God".
Becoming imitators of Christ, then, we too strive eagerly to say whatever the humanity of Christ says. For this is why he says these things: so that we may have a pattern of what we are to imitate, and so that we too may say "I will bless the Lord who gave me understanding", and so that we too may say "And moreover, even until night my kidneys instructed me". For we too came having certain beginnings of good things in the kidneys, and we have cultivated the seeds of the good things which we brought. Because of these things which we have, it is spoken of as being in the kidneys.
5. You will understand some such things if you are able to hear and to compare spiritual things with spiritual. This is how the wording goes: "When", then, "Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves; they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness with them". And perhaps such letters are written in the heart. But hear when they are written. When I am an infant, it is not written in my heart; but when I begin to be able to receive the law of God in the heart, then it is written, "not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God", seeds having been laid down beforehand in what are called the kidneys.
For bodily names are applied to the powers of the soul by analogy with bodily things. For example, the soul is said to have eyes, which are illumined by the commandment of God and bear the same name as the eyes of the body, since the eyes of the soul do what is analogous to the work of the eyes of the body. The eyes of the body see bodies and colors, and the eyes of the soul see intelligible things. So too the soul is said to have ears, bearing the same name as the ears of the body.
If, then, a heart of the soul is also spoken of, bearing the same name as the heart of the body which receives the ruling faculty, understand, I pray you, a heart analogous to the eyes of the soul and its ears. So too, if you hear of kidneys of the soul being searched by God, understand them of the soul, analogously to eyes and ears and heart; for God searches neither a bodily heart nor bodily kidneys. And just as the heart in the body holds the ruling faculty (which is why it is said: "You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart"), so what happens in the kidneys of the soul is analogous to what happens in the bodily kidneys. In the kidneys the seeds are formed; the male has them about the kidneys, and so he becomes fertile. So too the fertile soul has the powers of the spiritual seeds in the kidneys of the soul. For the soul too sows, having the seeds about the kidneys, if it is worthy of holy blessing and blessedness and does nothing that deserves the curse which says: "There shall not be among you one without offspring nor barren".
Hearing, then, the man in the Savior saying "I will bless the Lord who gave me understanding, and moreover, even until night my kidneys instructed me", say these things yourself too. And say also "I foresaw the Lord before me always".
For indeed the Lord dwells in you always, if you wish. Become, like Paul, an imitator of him, and you will find that the Lord is always in you. For you too will say: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me".
"I foresaw": I have eyes that see the Lord, who is always before me. When is the Lord before me? The Word is before me then, when I keep the law of God, which says: "You shall bind these words upon your hands, and they shall be unshaken before your eyes." Thus indeed "I foresaw my Lord", the Word. Who is so blessed as to serve no one but the Word, and to say "I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken"? If you dishonor the Word of God, the Word comes to be on your left; if you dishonor him, so it is. But if you honor the Word of God, the Word of God comes to be on your right. Judas dishonored the Word of God and cast him to the left, and therefore he receives a curse which says: "Let the devil stand at his right hand".
6. But if someone listens to the whole of the Scriptures, he can raise objections to me on these points and give me trouble, until God grants a supply of the spirit of wisdom that resolves the difficulty and the trouble. For one who is able to hear what is said more deeply will say: "Granted that the devil stands "at the right hand" of Judas. You bring forward a text that can put me to shame: that the devil stands "at his right hand", and that "at the right hand" of the righteous man stands the Lord, which is why the righteous man, imitating Christ, should say "I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken". But what will you say about the texts written in Zechariah concerning Jesus the great priest? For it is written there that "the devil was standing at his right hand, to oppose him"."
But come, O Christ; Word of God, be present among us; make clear to me and to those who wish to listen genuinely how the devil stands "at the right hand" of Jesus, since the devil, by the words "at his right hand", is one who opposes, or "to oppose him": for he was already opposing, he already "was standing". While Jesus is still wrestling, clothed in the filthy garments, before he has stripped them off, then the devil stands "at his right hand to oppose him". But when he took off the filthy garments, which are my sins (for he stripped them off and put on the long robe), then, once he has put on the long robe, no longer does "the devil stand at his right hand to oppose him"; he has ceased. Perhaps, then, as long as the wrestling lasts, the devil does not simply stand at the right hand, but stands there to oppose. But when you conquer, you cast him out, as he opposes you, from your right hand, and then Christ comes to your right hand and you say: "I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken". "Therefore", because he is at my right hand, "my heart was glad". Let us do such things, so that Christ, the Word of God, may come and stand at our right hand and our heart may be glad; for when the Word is present, the heart is glad.
7. "Therefore my heart was glad and my glory rejoiced". In the Acts of the Apostles we found this written not thus but "and my tongue rejoiced" (γλῶσσα), whereas here it is "my glory rejoiced" (δόξα). And all the versions have "my glory rejoiced". I venture to say that the apostles have not said anything in conflict with the prophetic word. Either a scribal error has occurred, someone not understanding "my glory rejoiced" and making it "my tongue rejoiced"; or, if someone does not want to admit that a scribal error has occurred, let him interpret it in a clearer sense.
"My glory rejoiced": and my glory is my tongue. For the tongue of the wise man is his glory, since he is glorified in his tongue and in his word. The athlete's glory is his noble body, the physician's glory is the art of medicine, the craftsman's glory is his hands; just so, the glory of the wise man who speaks divine and holy things is his tongue. So the tongue is not something other than the glory; glory and tongue are the same. Pray for me, unworthy though I am, that out of his love and yours God may give me a tongue and glory, so that I may be glorified before God and men — my tongue. For if you are heard, my tongue will be my glory. The one who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, then, made it "my tongue rejoiced", understanding the tongue to be the same as the glory.
8. "And moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope". My Lord Jesus says these things, whose flesh was the first to dwell in hope. For he was crucified and on the third day was raised, becoming "firstborn from the dead". Having been raised, he was taken up into heaven and brought up from the earth an earthly body, so that the heavenly powers were astonished, never having seen this spectacle: flesh ascending into heaven. Of Elijah it is written that "he was taken up as if into heaven", and of Enoch "that God translated him", but "into heaven" is not said. Before my Lord Jesus Christ "no one has ascended into heaven". Let whoever wishes take offense at my words; I say with confidence that as he is "firstborn" from "the dead", so too he was the first to bring flesh up into heaven. The powers, at any rate, are astonished at this new event, because they see flesh that has ascended into heaven, and they say: "Who is this who comes from Edom", that is, from earthly things, "with redness of garments?" They see the traces of the blood and of the wounds. "From Bosor", that is, from the flesh, "so beautiful in his robe, with force, with strength? I discourse". "Who is this?" And no one else answers about him; he himself answers, "with strength": "I discourse of righteousness and judgment of salvation". Again they inquire: "Why are your garments red, and your clothing as from a trodden winepress, full, trodden down?" Then, as a victor who has conquered with his body, he says: "And of the nations there was no one with me, and I crushed them, and gathered them, and trampled them into the earth". If the powers do not yet remember the dispensation that was spoken through the prophets, at the Savior's word they also say: "I remembered the mercy of the Lord, the virtues of the Lord in all things which he has rendered to us". These things I have said because of "my flesh will dwell in hope". "In hope": how great a hope? Not that he rose from the dead here, for that was a modest thing. The hope was when he was taken up into heaven, when the powers speak: not only those which spoke before, but also those who escort him and send him on his way: "Lift up your gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the king of glory shall come in". Other powers answer: "Who is this king of glory?" Then again the escorting powers say: "The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battles". Then the escorting virtues say: "Lift up the gates". He is greater; your gates do not contain the Christ. "Lift up your gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the king of glory shall come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of powers, he is the king of glory". This is the one who said: "And moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades".
The soul alone went down to Hades, where there were only souls. If here too there had been only souls, and the living being were not composite, he would not have come here composite. Hence those err who say that the Savior did not come to dwell among us as a composite being. They say that he took up a body like the surpassing substance of the Word himself, or rather the same as the substance of the Word, and that the soul was the same as the substance of the Word. These people set aside his kindness, who put on the composite man and said: "My flesh will dwell in hope, you will not abandon my soul to Hades". Where, then, there were naked souls, the soul alone went down; where the living being was composite, the composite one came with a soul.
If in descending he descended also to the angels (for he came from the summit of the heavens), perhaps he took form according to the place. And just as in this life he was transfigured before those who had gone up with him onto the mountain and appeared more glorious, so too when he descended from the Father. Since "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", in descending from the Father he did not remain such as he was before, "in the beginning with God". For the lower beings could not contain him. Just as for me he became a man, so among some he became an angel, and among others a throne, a dominion, a principality, a power; and to each the Lord becomes whatever each is able to contain him as.
Why do I say "at that time"? Even today the Word is transfigured. Paul and Timothy do not see him alike. Paul sees him glorious and transfigured toward the more divine, more than Timothy does; Timothy sees his glory as lesser. And if you think of someone lesser than Timothy, you will see a lesser form of Jesus, appearing to the lesser one. But if someone is very much a sinner, he does not see his glory at all, but sees him "having no form nor beauty, but his form without honor, failing beside the sons of men". He sees him as a man, and a man not unstricken but "under a blow". If you are under a blow, you see him under a blow; if you are unstricken, you will see him unstricken; if you are blameless, you will see him showing himself to you as blameless. Not that he himself was ever blemished, or that he himself was ever struck: the infirmities "of ours he bears and suffers pain for us, and we reckoned him to be in toil and under a blow and in affliction".
These things I have said because of "you will not abandon my soul to Hades". For it was necessary to establish that with a naked soul he came to souls.
9. "Nor will you give your holy one to see corruption". Scripture has its own way of calling being in something "seeing" (ἰδεῖν) it. For example: "Who is the man who will live and will not see death?" So the one who died sees death, the one who is corrupted sees corruption, and the one who is not corrupted does not see corruption. And this is like the usage concerning knowledge; it is customary in the idiom of Scripture. Which usage concerning knowledge do I mean, if not "Him who knew no sin he made sin for us"? Ordinary usage speaks of the knowledge of sin in one way (for the multitude know what sin is), but Scripture speaks of it in another. If, then, the one who has sinned knew sin, and the one who has not sinned did not know sin, clearly the one who knows Christ knew righteousness. The one who knows injustice is unjust; knowing injustice he knows it, but he does not know Christ, he does not know righteousness. And everyone who knows sin does not know righteousness.
These things I have said because of "you will not give your holy one to see corruption". For what is said in a strange way, contrary to the usage of the many, had to be examined along with it.
10. "You made known to me ways of life": his humanity says "you made known to me ways of life". For the humanity ascends upon the ways of life, and above all upon the way in heaven. This composite of the body, about which we have said these things, says: "You made known to me ways of life". But perhaps he also speaks about you. For he refers all things in you to himself — and I mean to you, who are his body and member — "to make known ways of life". It is not "way of life" (ὁδὸν ζωῆς) but "ways of life" (ὁδοὺς ζωῆς), nor "ways of lives" (ὁδοὺς ζωῶν) but "ways of life". For life is one, and many are the ways leading to it: first ones, second, third and last. The first way, that of elementary instruction, leads to this life. If you like, call Moses the first way: the elements, the law the pedagogue, the stewards, the guardians. All these are ways of life, but ways of life that lead to life not directly. There are many roads to the royal city, some near and some far. Just so, the near ways are those that lead to it, and the far ones lead to life, to the one who said "I am the way". And he who said "I am the way" leads to the God and Father of the universe.
After this comes: "You will fill me with gladness with your face". Concerning this too it must be said that the true gladnesses are those with which Christ is filled, and they arise from the Father's face as he contemplates it. And the Father himself fills him with gladnesses, and above all what is called his face does so. This is also the "delight" that is "at his right hand", the right hand with which he welcomes Christ and the saints. But before one arrives at the end, no one is able to partake of the delight at the right hand of God, to whom belong the glory and the might to the ages. Amen.