Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 10 — Psalm 73 (LXX; MT 74), Homily II: vv. 8–15
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. 238–251. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the 73rd Psalm, Homily 2
1. Just as there are kinships of bodies, and within kinships some are near to the stock, others a little farther off, and some are close kin while others are kin from very far off, so understand with me that there are also kin among souls. For among souls, kinships are formed by likeness of character. If the kinships are fair and good, they have their origin from God; but if they are base and wicked, they have their origin from the devil. And just as in kinships there are "many fathers" and many brothers, so understand with me also regarding spiritual kinships. For even if there are fathers in the primary sense (God, for those who have "the spirit of adoption"; the devil, for those who sin), yet below these there are fathers, some among human beings, others among the powers, whether the opposing ones or the better ones.
What I mean will be clear in this way. For instance, among human beings we have spiritual fathers, those who begot us in Christ, as Paul, being a father, said: "if you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers". And in the same way the powers that work together for our salvation are also, in a way, our fathers. And this is how I understand the words "but you shall go to your fathers in peace": after God, Abraham had as fathers all the holy angels who became his fellow workers toward blessedness and salvation. So too among the opposing powers there is kinship, and there are fathers beyond number.
2. Here, then, he said, "their kindred together", meaning the kindred of the enemies of the people of God, "Come", and "let us make them cease" from the mountain of God, "from the earth". For when our Savior and Lord was plotted against by the invisible powers and by the Jews who were being worked upon by them: by invisible powers, according to "the kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, against his Christ", and by Jews, in that all of them, being of one mind, said: "Away, away with such a one from the earth", "Crucify, crucify him", "His blood be on us and on our children", then, at the time of the Savior's passion, all the opposing powers, plotting against the Savior, were working in those who acted wickedly against him, and the wicked kindreds said: "Come and let us make all the feasts of God cease from the earth".
For because the Savior was plotted against at the feast of the Passover, every feast has been abolished from the people, and their feasts were turned "into mourning and their songs into lamentation". "They said", then, "their kindred together: Come and let us make all the feasts of God cease from the earth". Those beings say these things, but what they said has come upon the Jews. Therefore the people says: "Our signs we have not seen". Since our Savior suffered, the signs among the people have ceased. There are no longer signs and wonders, although until then they happened at the very birth of the Savior. Such were the signs that happened a short while before: a vision of an angel appeared to Zechariah. Such were the signs at the passion of the Savior. After those signs, signs have indeed happened, but not for Jews nor from Jews; rather, the signs passed over from the people to the Gentiles. Therefore the people says: "Our signs we have not seen; there is no longer a prophet". That people says even to this day: "We have no prophet". For prophecy has ceased, since "the law and the prophets prophesied until John". And since prophecy has ceased, the Holy Spirit has consequently ceased from them, and the benefaction has passed over to the Gentiles. This holds unless we too grow wanton, unless we become watered down, unless we become vulgar and lose the grace poured out from God upon us, while the people, for its part, says with a view to our dispensation what is true of itself: "Our signs we have not seen; there is no longer a prophet".
If then, Christian, you who have been called to so great a grace, run back again and abandon the people called by the grace of God in order to go off to a people deprived of the grace of God, and abandon a people that has the Holy Spirit in order to go off to a people that does not have the Holy Spirit ("the daughter of Zion was left like a booth in a vineyard and like a watchman's hut in a cucumber field"), why do you flee and desert to those who have been abandoned? Come where the church of God is, come where the Holy Spirit is, where the power of Jesus is gathered, according to "when you are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ".
And further, after "We have no prophet", they also say "us he will not know any longer". It is as though the abandoned Jews prophesy about themselves, saying that not only does he not know us now, but he will no longer "know us". For until the consummation he will no longer know that people, since knowledge has passed over to the "people from the Gentiles". So much, according to one interpretation, as concerning that people.
3. But see that the kindred of the evil one does not say about you too: "Come and let us make all the feasts of God cease from the earth". For you too were called to holy feasts, as it has been said: "So let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth". If you understand all the feasts and the unleavened bread, see that you too are not plotted against by the enemies so that they make the feasts of God cease from you. And when do the feasts of God cease from you? When you do not have the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Suppose, by way of hypothesis, that there were then no wheat, and nothing that leavens: then there was no material for unleavened bread. So too, if your unleavened bread falls away from truth and sincerity, so to name it, and is kneaded in that way; if you lose sincerity and take up deceit, if you lose truth and take up falsehood; then, when the kindred of the evil one says "Come and let us make the feasts of God cease from the earth", you, as far as it lay with you, have made the feasts of God cease.
For no one who has wickedness keeps the feast of unleavened bread, the unleavened bread of Christians. But there are those who, after Christianity and the divine teachings, when they ought to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, wish to keep the feast with unleavened bread made from wheat and with unleavened bread made from perceptible things, which Christ abolished when he fulfilled the law in spiritual things. Clearly, having fallen from the grace of God, they keep neither this feast nor that one. For that is not a feast: when Christ is not in it and the Holy Spirit is not in it, it cannot be a feast. I exhort you, if there are any "silly women laden with sins, led away by various desires", desiring to walk with their feet on both sides, both to Judaize and to Christianize: repent, change; become either Jewish or Christian. For I will say to you the word of Elijah the prophet, which he once spoke to the double-minded: "How long will you go lame on both your knee-joints?"
But the Christian people also has signs. It dims the demons that are driven out through prayers, simply and without magic arts: not with amulets, not with drugs, not with studied incantations, not with Solomonic charms, as though the name of Jesus had no power, but in the manner of the Gospel. And this is the dimmer sign. Every day signs happen among Christians: "the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the poor" have the good news preached to them. For what sign happens now, and happens in a better way than it used to happen in perceptible things? For I want an eye of the soul that recovers its sight, rather than an eye of the body. If then you too sin, you will say, not bodily as the Jews said it, but about spiritual signs: "Our signs we have not seen". And when you reject the prophets, or accept their letter but do not take the meaning in them as one ought, then "there is not", for you, "a prophet". For there is a prophet for the one who hears the prophetic words as the Holy Spirit wills. And just as the Marcionites, reading the prophets, do not have the prophets (for they do not have God the Creator, who gave the prophecies), so you too, if you speak ill of the prophets (while the Apostle says "Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies"), will say: "There is no longer a prophet, and us he will not know any longer".
For when you do unworthy things, so that God, who knows his own, does not know you as well and does not attend to you, you too will say: "and us he will not know any longer". For "the Lord knew" not all, but "those who are his". But someone appears who is not of God. And who is of God? "Everyone who does sin" is not of God but "of the devil". Everyone who confesses righteousness, that is, Christ, both in words and in deeds, has been born of God. God therefore knows those who are his, and it is clear that they truly are of God.
4. After this, let us see what those who have been abandoned say in the prayer: "How long will the enemy reproach, O God, will the adversary provoke your name to the end?" The invisible enemy reproaches, and he does so always. And we say it in the case of sinners, if indeed we are turning back and willing to repent, and would that they too did so: "How long, O God, will the enemy reproach, will the adversary provoke your name to the end? Why do you turn away your hand and your right hand from the midst of your bosom to the end?" When God visits, his hand brings forth good things from his bosom (these things are said symbolically) and gives to us from his bosom. But where he does not visit, neither does he give Christ from his bosom. For the "Only-begotten God", "who is in the bosom of the Father", "he has made him known". If then you do not know Christ, and you perceive that you are empty of him but full of sins, you too pray and say: "Why do you turn away your hand and your right hand from the midst of your bosom to the end?"
"But our God, our King before the age, worked salvation from the midst of the earth". Blessed is the one who can say this with truth, because he is no longer ruled by sin reigning "in" his "mortal body", but is ruled by God alone, who commands and rules and guides the soul. Then our God is our King. And this God of ours is "our King": "our King worked salvation from the midmost parts of the earth", that is, of our soul. And it is "in the midst of the earth", not in such a way that one should think there is some place of the earth where God works salvation, but when he works the salvation of souls. Concerning this salvation the prophets sought out and searched out. So even if God works, he works salvation not outside the earth, but "in the midst of the earth". For this is the marvel: that while we are in the earth and in the body, we have God working salvation "in the midst of the earth".
5. "You strengthened the sea in your power". In the simpler sense, the maker of all things strengthened this sea and gave great power particularly to the sea, saying to it: "As far as here you shall come, and your waves shall be broken within you". But in the spiritual sense too, the sea (the life of human beings, full of many waves, as the next verse will show fits better) has been strengthened by God. And the sea is a strong antagonist of the human race, and it is impossible for one who is in this life not to be as in a sea.
The good helmsman fights against the contrary winds and stands firm against the waves that sweep over him. He does not betray the ship, but even in a storm does his own work, devoting himself at the same time to prayer to God.
So too the one of whom our discourse speaks, who has acquired the helmsman's skill, who has reason in himself as a helmsman: when all the winds have assailed him too, whether bodily ones or temptations of whatever kind from outward things, he holds his own tiller and moves his hand so as to yield to nothing, but rather, in the storms of life, to show himself, and be seen to be, able to steer himself as if in calm and peace and ordinary conditions. But why are our saints blessed also in the storm and in the war? Because they have been good helmsmen in storms, "in labors more abundantly, in blows more abundantly, in prisons beyond measure, who indeed often received from the Jews forty stripes less one", when three times they were beaten with rods, when they were stoned, when they were shipwrecked, when they were in danger in the desert. Do you see what sort of reason they had as helmsman? Because of it, in all the storms they went through, they were not shipwrecked. Rather, in all these they sailed straight on and blessed God, all the way to the "harbor of the will" of God. These things on account of "You strengthened the sea in your power".
6. That the sea fits the spiritual sense rather than the bodily is clear from what follows: "You broke the heads of the dragons upon the water". For is it upon this water of the sea and of the rivers that the many dragons are, and does God perceptibly break the heads of the dragons? Or is the life of human beings full of dragons? And is it this life that is the great and spacious sea, where ships pass through, where there are small creatures with great ones, where there is this dragon "whom you formed to mock it"? For this sea has a great multitude of dragons, and it is the work of God to break the heads of the dragons upon the water. As often as you are plotted against by an opposing power, perceive that an invisible dragon is plotting against you, and a serpent, about which the Savior says: "I give you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy".
So as often as you are plotted against by an opposing power, pray. And if, having prayed, you are helped, having become worthy of the Word of God, who crushes the dragon's head in you, then so often you conquered, and the head of the dragon has been crushed. For instance, some desire has crept in upon you, and some thought has troubled you about consenting to an unclean deed. If this desire is sated, if it is put to death, the Word has crushed the head of one dragon. But when evil rises up against the ruling faculty (for from within, "out of the heart come forth evil thoughts"), call again upon God to send you the Word. The Word, when he comes, will crush the head of the dragon. And it is a blessed thing for your soul to be filled with dead dragons that once lived in you. "For you crushed the heads of the dragons upon the water": in place of 'upon the unstable affairs of life', upon things neither fixed nor standing, "you crushed the heads of the dragon".
There are many dragons, each of which has a head, and there is one many-headed dragon. But if you want to hear it more simply and more figuratively, wickedness is one many-headed dragon. For each kind of sin and each kind of wickedness is a head of this one dragon. Thus folly is a head of the dragon of wickedness, and so are injustice, licentiousness, cowardice, impiety, love of money, and the rest of the list of the dragon's heads. But if you wish to learn it in another way too, know that the adversary, the ancient dragon, the devil, is written in the Revelation of John to have many heads; for he is not single-headed.
In one sense I will call all his rulers his heads, and in another sense those who come from the heresies. For instance, Basilides is a head of the devil, Valentinus is a head of the devil, Apelles is another head, and in a word all the leaders in heresies are heads of the one dragon.
"You", then, "crushed the heads of the dragons upon the water". If you rise in your reasoning, you will see what rank they hold among the opposing powers, the pre-eminent one and the lesser ones: some are the heads of the dragon, others the rest of his body. For Scripture knows a body of the dragon that has some parts last and others higher up. For instance: "and every sea-creature coming together will not bear one hide of his tail". That is, every sea-creature in the body, coming together, cannot endure even the last and uttermost parts of wickedness, unless God helps. There are, then, many heads of the dragon, which God will break off from us, according to the blessing of the Apostle, who says: "But the God of peace, who brought me up, will break Satan under your feet shortly". I know that I say these things, and he seeks again to bite us, especially those who say these things about him: "but the Lord is my helper and my protector and my Savior; whom shall I fear?" Let us pray, and all his threats will be thrown into confusion. For God says: "Take courage, I have conquered the world".
7. Then again, tropology: who can avoid allegorizing? Let the one who takes offense, and who does not think that we say these things by force, tell us: "You crushed the heads of the dragon, you gave him as food to the peoples, to the Ethiopians". Do the Ethiopians, those from the ends of the inhabited world, receive from God the body of a dragon and cut it up as if into limbs, so as to eat the flesh of the dragon? Is this a thought worthy of the Holy Spirit? Is this worthy of prophetic grace? Why do they take offense at the words that lift up our soul? But it is possible to show that just as the saints eat the body of Christ, and the Lord says, "My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink", so sinners eat the body of the dragon. For instance, the Valentinians and Basilidians and the others from the heresies make a eucharist. Do they then eat the body of Christ, whom they blaspheme, whom they do not know? Far from it! But we, for our part, if indeed we too pray to eat the body of Christ; they, however, the body of the dragon, about which it is written: "You gave him as food to the peoples, to the Ethiopians", to those in ignorance, to those in darkness, to those separated by ignorance and sins.
8. "You burst open a spring and a torrent". According to the narrative, the simpler person will say that he burst open a spring from a rock when the people came out of the land of Egypt. He burst open a spring in the case of Samson, when water came out of the jawbone of the ass and he drank, and other such things could be found in the divine Scriptures. But I find that each one has a promise from my Lord Jesus, and I will say that "a spring" will flow from his belly, "of water springing up to eternal life". And I would say that "You burst open a spring and a torrent" fits this one better spiritually. For instance, if you pray for us, God bursts open a spring in us and makes a torrent come forth, and this spring will never fail. Bodily springs fail if they are not supplied from the heavenly water. Pray, then, for us, that a spiritual rain may fill the spring and the torrent, and that you may be refreshed drinking from the spiritual water. "You", then, burst open "a spring and a torrent" in our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might to the age of ages. Amen.