Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 12 — Psalm 74 (LXX; MT 75): the whole psalm (vv. 1–11)
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. 269–279. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the 74th Psalm, Homily 1
1. The one who looks to the end says, through the very act of looking: "To the end, do not destroy". For, by doing the works of incorruption (ἀφθαρσία), he cries out "Do not destroy" (μὴ διαφθείρῃς). Instead of "To the end, do not destroy", one of the translators has put: "For incorruption". So the things written here lead us up to incorruption when they are understood and put into practice. The psalm is Asaph's, and it is performed with both instrument and voice. This shows that we ought to hymn God both with an instrument, through our bodily movements, and with an intelligible voice, through the mind's being devoted to the Creator and gaining salvation. At its beginning the psalm is spoken by a multitude, and after that by one. Just as the multitude and the one are not the same, so it is not one person who speaks throughout the whole psalm. For the multitude says: "We will confess to you, O God, and we will call upon your name", but one says: "I will recount your wonders, when I receive the opportunity". One person does this, speaking until the end.
Understand, then, that the multitude is the church called from the Gentiles, which obeys the one who called it and says, because of its former sins: "We will confess to you, O God". It is not possible to "call upon the name of the Lord" in such a way as to attain the saying "Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved", unless one first renounces sin and confesses his former sins. For this reason it is written: "We will confess and we will call upon your name". It is not "We will call upon and we will confess to you", but "We will confess to you and we will call upon your name". If, then, we too wish to be found among those who call upon him and to be saved with them (for it is written: "Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved"), let us become accusers of our own sin and abandon it completely.
For the church has said: "We will confess to you, O God, we will confess" to you, and it persists in confession. It will confess not once but many times, and the confession shows this, since it says a second time "We will confess", and then also "We will call upon your name". Then my Lord answers, giving thanks for the church, and says the words that follow: "'I will recount your wonders, when I receive the opportunity'. Now, as long as they still need confession, and promise as they come forward to call upon you, God, they do not yet have room for the accounts of your mysteries. They need the opportunity of their repentance, of their perfect conversion, of their cleansing. And I promise that 'I will recount your wonders, when I receive the opportunity'." Each of us, then, if he wishes to hear Jesus recounting the wonders of the Father, let him give him an opportunity within himself. The one who lives well gives him an opportunity, just as, on the contrary, the one who gives his leisure to sins does not give him an opportunity.
2. That these are the utterances of the Savior, and not of someone else saying these things to the Father, the next verse cries out: "I will judge uprightness". And who dares to say "I will judge": one who has been entrusted with a judgment seat by a human being, or the Savior and Lord alone? For he alone "will judge uprightness". Then, having heard the church promising confession, he bears witness to the repentance of those who have believed and says: "The earth melted", that is, all that is earthly melted. May Jesus bear witness for us too, so that he may say of the earth in us and of the earthly things: "The earth melted". For example, we have borne the image of the earthy. We must put off the image of the earthy. We must not merely lay it aside while it still subsists, but do everything so that the image of the earthy may melt and, as it were, vanish completely.
For if one becomes such, and by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body so that we "always carry about the dying of Jesus in the body", the Savior will say about us: "The earth melted and all who dwell in it". There was once a multitude, while we dwelt in this earth, when "sin reigned in our mortal body". This, then, is our brave achievement, on account of which the Savior bears witness to the church. He says that not only "the earth and the earthly things melted", but also "as many as dwell in the earth". For all the opposing powers that were at home in earthly things, ruling in us and working on us toward sins, melted along with the earth. Imagine a throne of wax, with someone sitting on the throne, and then a fire that has come and melted it. Just so, if your earthly things melt, and the workings that work on you concerning earthly things melt, the Savior will say about you: "The earth melted and all who dwell in it".
That these are the utterances of our Savior, hear the one who says: "I made firm its pillars". For who made firm its pillars upon the earth, other than our Savior and Lord alone? Do you want to hear the names of the pillars? First Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother. And the whole church too, if it is truly a church, is "a pillar and foundation of the truth". In the Revelation of John, too, such a promise is given to those who conquer: "'The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of God, and he will by no means go outside any more'. So the pillars of the earth, those who still bear a body and are steadfast and hold up the buildings mentioned before, I made firm. I did not only set them up or make them, but I made the pillars on the earth steadfast."
Since he taught us too, the sinners from the Gentiles, to turn to God, he says these things to God: "I said to those who transgress the law (παρανομοῦσι): Do not transgress the law, and to those who sin: Do not lift up a horn". Those who transgress the law are those from the people; those who sin are those from the Gentiles. For we did not transgress the law, since we were without law (ἄνομοι). It was they who transgressed it, for they heard the laws and did not keep them. "I said", then, "to those who transgress the law: Do not transgress the law, and to those who sin: Do not lift up your horn, do not speak injustice against God". For those from the Gentiles who worshipped idols "spoke injustice against God".
3. Then what follows needs the grace of God. All of it does, but some parts more than others: "For neither from the outgoings nor from the west nor from the desert mountains, for God is judge". "These things," he says, "I said: 'to' the one group, 'those who transgress the law: Do not transgress the law; to' the other, 'those who sin: Do not lift up a horn, do not lift up your horn on high, do not speak injustice against God'." For there is no other judge but God. For "neither" does any judge come "from the outgoings", "nor from the west" does any judge come, "nor from the desert mountains" does any judge come, "for God is judge". What, then, does this God, the judge, do? "This one he humbles and this one he exalts". It points to two, one humbled and one exalted. "This one", then, "he humbles": it points to the people of the circumcision, for it has been humbled. "And this one he exalts": it points to the people from the Gentiles. For he exalted it according to what is said in the curses, that "the proselyte who is among you will go up above you, higher and higher"; for "this one he exalts". "But you will go down lower and lower"; for "this one he humbles".
In our own constitution too, consistently with "The earth melted, and all who dwell in it", we have explained "This one he humbles and this one he exalts". For "this one he humbles": the mind of the flesh, and the flesh. For "I pummel the body and bring it into subjection". "This one he exalts": the soul and the spirit. In sinners, on the contrary, the soul has been humbled by sin, while the other has been exalted. But in the righteous, who fast, who labor diligently, who keep vigil, who put to death their members that are on the earth — the body has been humbled, while the soul, ever being renewed "according to the inner man", and the mind, "in the renewal of the mind", is exalted. So the good God "humbles this one and exalts this one".
4. Then what does it teach us about judgment, as it goes on? "A cup in the hand of the Lord, of unmixed wine, full of mixture, and he tilted it from this to that; but its dregs were not emptied out". Most of the copies have it thus (οὐκ ἐξεκενώθη), but the more accurate ones have: "were emptied out; all the sinners of the earth will drink". He has named the punishments a "cup". But the word also knows the refreshments as a "cup of salvation", and we have examples of both. For in Jeremiah it is written about the punishments: "Take the cup of this unmixed wine, and you shall make all the nations drink, to which I will send you, to them, and they will drink and vomit". And about there being a cup of blessedness mixed for the righteous, it is written in a certain psalm: "And my cup, inebriating, as the best".
Each of us, then, is going to drink what he has cultivated. It is just as on the estates of landowners: those who take greater care of the vine drink from its produce, and those who have neglected it drink vinegar, if one must name it so, or some product of their neglect; and to name it otherwise, according to Scripture, the righteous drink from the vine of Sorek, but the unjust from the vine of Sodom, about which it is written: "For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and their tendril from Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, a cluster of bitterness is theirs; their wine is the rage of dragons and the incurable rage of asps".
So always understand, I pray, that there are, as it were, two cups in the hand of the Lord for each of us. When we sin, we put our sins into the cup of sins according to the proportion of the sin; but when we do well, we put our deeds into the cup of good deeds. Then each of us who has both sins and good deeds is going to drink the sin not unmixed but mixed, according to the proportion of what was done before the sin. Try to picture a cup of gall and another cup of wine. If the cup of wine has little wine and is mixed with the gall, it blunts the gall and the wickedness a little. If it has more wine, it blunts them more. And if the cup of gall is small, because the sin is small, but the cup of wine is large, the small amount of gall is poured in, and the large amount of wine is tasted along with the gall. Then he will taste far less of the gall.
Because of the quantity of the wine, then, we must all drink. If we have sins, we drink the cup of gall itself, a cup of wrath. But if we have no sins and have done all things well, we drink the cup of the Lord, the one "inebriating, as the best". And if we are mixed, we shall drink according to the proportion of good things and their opposites. See, then, whether the word has not said this clearly in order to teach two things: that one who is conscious of having sinned should not lose heart, and that one who is conscious of better things should not think highly of himself. For if one who is conscious of better things thinks highly of himself, he too would be putting something, if I may name it so, into the cup of gall.
5. "A cup", then, "in the hand of the Lord, of unmixed wine, full of mixture, and he tilted it from this to that". For we must receive not only the portion of evils. It must also be tilted from this cup into that cup, so that we sinners may drink a cup "full of mixture". Someone before me asked: if "of mixture", how "unmixed"? And if "unmixed", how "of mixture"? But see whether what is said can be understood in this way. We too are accustomed to say of this perceptible cup, "You have mixed it rather unmixed (ἀκρατότερον)" and "You have mixed it unmixed", because someone has put in a little water but more wine. So it is possible to find unmixed wine that has been mixed. Of those who drink, some mix it rather unmixed, while others do not do so. All who are sinners, then, since at some time they too have done something good, drink not simply unmixed wine, but an unmixed mixture. But those who have done more of the better things, if they drink the cup of their sin, drink a mixture that is not unmixed but, if one must name it so, a well-tempered or weak mixture. Yet the mixture comes from nothing else but the deeds. Drugs are mixed with one another, and according to the proportion of the quantity or quality of the drugs they are all blended together into one, and the compounded medicine displays their different qualities. In the same way, in the cup that we are going to drink, the character of each of our sins, and of each idle word, must come back up. For certainly even the idle word comes into the judgment, and evil-speaking and reviling and whatever else we do.
For "a cup in the hand of the Lord, of unmixed wine, full of mixture, and he tilted it from this to that; but its dregs were not emptied out". For the wrath has not been portioned out to us: if we do not sin, it has no dregs. "All the sinners of the earth will drink": not some yes and some no, but "all the sinners". What, then, is "of the earth" doing here? For he did not say simply "all the sinners will drink", but added "of the earth". Perhaps, then, the sinners of the earth will drink from "the cup of the unmixed wine, the one full of mixture", because no one of those on earth has it unmixed, unblended with anything. But the opposing power no longer drinks "of unmixed wine, full of mixture"; it drinks from the unmixed wine of wickedness.
6. "But I will proclaim to the age; I will sing psalms to the God of Jacob". Our Teacher and Lord has so many lessons that he proclaims them not for ten years only. A grammarian proclaims in that way, and then has nothing more to teach; a philosopher, too, proclaims and hands on his teaching, and then no longer has anything newer to say. But the lessons of Christ are so many that he proclaims them to the whole age. And take "to the age" as shared with what follows too: "I will sing psalms to God" to the age. And what shall I do? "And I will shatter all the horns of sinners". For this reason, then, "do not lift up your horn on high". For "all the horns of sinners" our Lord Jesus Christ "will shatter", but he "will exalt the horns of the righteous" who are his, through the grace of the almighty God in Christ Jesus, to whom belong the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.