Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 21 — Psalm 77 (LXX; MT 78), Homily IV: vv. 23–30 (the manna)
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. 390–408. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the 77th Psalm, Homily 4
1. "A man is a great thing, and a merciful man is precious"; and there are many signs and tokens to be found of the greatness of the human soul. But perhaps greater than these (I mean than those found in man himself) are the things that come about from God for the sake of man. For God exercises great providence for him: he both opens heaven to him and gives him heavenly food. And he leads him by the hand, himself becoming light to those who journey and leading them onto roads which human nature by itself does not know. "All" then "Scripture", as being "inspired by God and profitable", and so too the psalms which were read, teaches the one who is able to hear it how great the greatness of the human soul is, and what kind of providence God exercises for it.
2. But since it is now set before us to explain what has been read, if God grants it, come, let us see how great are the things God has done for the sake of man. For "he commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and rained manna upon them to eat". These clouds are new, the clouds which God commands to rain manna. They are new in contrast to those in Isaiah, of which it is written: "the clouds" I will command "not to rain rain upon it". And perhaps, just as among perceptible clouds some are higher and more elevated and others lower, so also among the spiritual clouds, which rain either the rain upon the vineyard or manna upon the people of God, there are differences. So to speak, those that rain the manna are higher, while the lower ones are loftier than many, yet beneath those that rain the manna.
And we shall say that the inferior ones are the prophets. For these clouds he commanded no longer to rain rain upon that people, and that is why "there is no longer a prophet", and they say: "our signs we have not seen". The greater and superior clouds, we shall say, are the angels of God, the loftier clouds, which minister the heavenly bread, then symbolically but always truly. For in my view, and in the view of those better than I, the heavens are always opened and their doors are flung wide, and the clouds that have received the command rain upon those who journey, who have come out of the land of Egypt and are going away to the holy land.
3. "And he gave them bread of heaven; man ate bread of angels". And I think that angels are able in this way to minister to men "bread of angels" to eat, being angels, and, through their generosity, to share the bread which they eat with the nature of men. For just as the richer share their own loaves with the poor, so the angels, who are loftier and greater than we men (who are poor because of "the body of humiliation"), share their own food with us, since they are richer than we are.
And the words which we eat, "the living bread which came down from heaven", are given at times by God, at times by the angels. That this bread is at times given by God, one can hear from the Savior himself, who says: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven", which the Father, he says, gave to the world. That it is at times also given by angels, you would find in that it is angels too who speak in the prophets. All these share with us from the bread of their abundance, and they allot us very little. For we cannot have the angelic condition and hold as many teachings as angels hold; rather, if one must so name it, the belly of our soul holds little and takes in small amounts. For whether you speak of Paul or name Moses, he eats little compared with an angel's food. For each of these was a man, even if the one was a man of God and the other a man in Christ.
4. But let us be put to shame when we hear these things, and let us see how much zeal we spend on the body, anxious not to go hungry. Often, when we have bread, we want to have more and to partake of it purer, and to have not only what is necessary but also what serves luxury and pleasure. And if most of us are like this, I would say to myself and to those who have fallen into this: are we not ashamed? We exercise so much providence over bodily bread, wishing to eat the purer kind in comparison with it and to eat the healthier kind in season, yet we take no care that our wretched soul be fed; it perishes of hunger, and we have given it no thought. Or does the soul not perish of hunger when it falls into sins through want of living bread? If the athlete stops eating the athlete's food, he becomes weaker, and once weaker he falls, overcome by his opponent. In the same way the human soul, when it fails to eat the foods proper to its constitution that make it strong, must become weaker and, once weaker, be defeated in the wrestling.
Have you forgotten that "there is not" for you "the wrestling against blood and flesh", but against foes of what kind, how great, and how many? "Against", in fact, "the principalities": not against some who are subordinate but against the rulers. "Against the authorities": not against some paltry beings but against those who wield authority. "Against the world-rulers": not rulers of parts of the world but those who rule the world, "the world-rulers of this darkness". Be still more cautious as you hear that your wrestling is also against "the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places", so that you may learn to be fed on athletes' foods. Strive, then! For no one is crowned unless he competes lawfully. As part of lawful competition, let the athlete's food be taken together with the exercises.
Or do you not see what is related about those contests called the Great Gymnastic Games? At them there are present men sent by the Hellanodikai to watch how the athlete eats. Just as they attend the exercises and watch whether the exercises are done according to rule and according to reason, so they also attend the athletes while they are being fed. They cheer them on as they eat, as though they were competing, and at the very moment of their feeding they say: "You eat well, you eat nobly, you have good hopes"; they cheer them on over the food itself. Those men, then, undertake toil so that they may receive a perishable crown: the toil in their foods, the toil in their exercises, the toil in their various journeys abroad, and the toil in their travels on the road. And often grown men among them, men with full beards, are beaten, and they endure being beaten by their trainers, taking the blows on the back and on the belly.
But you, as you compete, do not want to endure the blows which God brings upon you, wishing to make you an athlete through the scourges. You do not want to give yourself over to the athlete's food; often one day passes with your soul unfed. And why do I say one? Rather a second, and a third, and a fourth. And that is not enough: often six and seven days pass for you, so that you are fed on one. If indeed you manage to come to the Lord's house and receive your spiritual food, and to be exhorted to salvation as well — yet not even after seven days, but after several Lord's days! Some already despise it and remain unfed the whole year; they come for the few days called Pascha, to be fed in them. Do you think that those people can compete, can struggle "against the spiritual hosts of wickedness", when they neglect their own foods like this? They cannot have strength if they do not take the foods that make them strong.
5. These things I have said on account of the heavenly manna, so that you may not call those of that time blessed, painting for yourself a picture of manna as the food of angels who chew it, a food entering the mouth of men. Even if these things happened in some way according to the dispensation of that time, they happened for our sake, "upon whom the ends of the ages have come".
But granting that the manna did come about according to the narrative, will you dare to say, in explaining "man ate bread of angels", that the very thing men ate, chewing it with their teeth, was eaten by the angels of God in the heavens? Will you say that they too had, just as the Israelites did, a sacrifice, as it were, so that they might grind the manna, and a pot so that they might boil the manna? Was the quality of the manna among the angels too like "a wafer in honey"? Was the appearance of the manna among the heavenly powers too like "fine coriander seed" to them, "like hoarfrost", and "it was white upon the earth"?
Or do you not know that the Holy Spirit mixed a bare tropology into the narrative? It did so to rouse the hearer who is about to fall wholly toward bodily things and wholly toward perceptible things, to rouse him toward the spiritual and better things. The angels, then, are fed spiritually, and so are thrones and dominions and principalities and authorities, and nothing remains unfed. Why do I say angels, thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities? Even my Lord Jesus Christ himself is fed. He acknowledges it, at any rate, and teaches it, saying: "My food is to do the will of the Father who sent me".
6. And the word dares to say something on account of the foods, if indeed it will dare to say such things opportunely before such an audience. Let it dare, and yet let it not dare; and let it speak, and let it judge. The word of God, then, knows that whatever is fed has a life that must be replenished, so that if, by hypothesis, it were not fed, it would be deprived of life. As regards the body, it is agreed that man replenishes his life from food too, and that if he neglects food and does not replenish his life at all, he is starved to death. The simple should suppose that this starvation does not befall the righteous man, since it is written: "The Lord will not starve a righteous soul to death". But the one who will understand divine things knows that there is another food of the soul, and that the soul by its own nature is mortal by another death, not by this one.
Some, misunderstanding this, thought because of "the soul that sins, it shall die" that the soul of man is utterly destroyed into non-being. They do not understand that, as regards its common life, every soul always lives, whether it wishes or not, being rational; but not so the other life, according to which all life is. For many souls have died: for "the soul that sins, it shall die".
The soul, then, as I said, being mortal by its nature, takes food so as not to die, the food preventing death, the enemy of life, from overpowering the soul. As long as you are fed, death cannot overpower you; but when you go unfed, then you will die. For going unfed you sin, and sinning you die, according to what is said: "the soul that sins, it shall die".
Then someone among those who hear these words will say: do the angels too, since they are fed, have a food that replenishes them, so that if they were not fed they would die? Let the word declare and demonstrate and say this: if indeed the angels "who would not keep their own principality but abandoned their own dwelling, he has kept in eternal bonds under gloom for the judgment of the great day" (God, that is), it is clear that they too are liable to die as a result of sinning. And they come to sin if they neglect their food, for their food too is the living Word, who said: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven". In this way, then, say that every power has a life that must be replenished.
7. Having come this far, it is enough for me to leave it to the hearer, if he is intelligent, to add to it, once he has heard a wise word and praised it. Saying something of this kind, at any rate, the Apostle, who always speaks wonderfully about God, says somewhere: "who alone has immortality". He shows by this that the life of the God of the universe alone does not need replenishing, and that nothing of the kind happens with the life of God that happens with the life of those who replenish it. If, then, "God alone has immortality", let all things provide for the replenishing of their own life, persuaded that if one neglects food, he will neglect life too and will die. Of this kind is the verse: "I was younger, and indeed I grew old, and I have not seen a righteous man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread; all the day he shows mercy and lends, and his seed will be for a blessing". Closely connected with these are also "The Lord will not starve a righteous soul to death" and "A righteous man eating fills his soul, but the souls of the impious are in want".
The righteous man, then, always eats, and there is no time when he neglects delight. For he also keeps the commandment that says: "Delight in the Lord", and he eats, indeed, for delight. For whoever has tasted spiritual food knows what the delight of the soul is. See, I pray you, an explanation of the Law; consider prophetic clarity; see a gospel word being unfolded; consider an apostle illuminating you with the clarity of Scripture. See if you do not perceive that such delight, the delight in which God wishes us to delight, is a delight contrary to the delight of the body. That is why, when he had created man, he placed him in the paradise of delight. The man who sinned, then, eats food not from heaven but from the earth. For it is written: "Cursed is the earth in your works; in sorrows you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread until you return to the earth from which you were taken".
8. But the one who does not sin in the desert, having left Egypt behind, no longer eats bread of the earth and no longer takes food from the cursed earth. See from where he is fed: for "he commanded", he says, "the clouds from above". For if you live well, the Lord says he will open to you the good heavenly treasure. Let those who hear these words take wing and be lifted up; let them no longer be in flesh, let them come to be in spirit! For "those who are in flesh cannot please God". Let them do such things that the Spirit may say to them: "But you are not in flesh but in spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you".
"And he opened the doors of heaven": I am persuaded that according to the letter this is impossible. For when God created this heaven, he did not make doors for it, so that at times heaven is opened and at other times shut. But according to tropology this is true. Seeking the doors of heaven, I find what the doors of heaven are. The one I have in him who said: "I am the door"; the other I find close at hand, for the other door is the Holy Spirit. These, then, are the doors of heaven that are opened. You can also see the doors of heaven in another way: the virtues are doors of heaven, while the vices are doors of death. "You who lift me up", he says, "from the gates of death, that I may declare all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion". You cannot come to be "in the gates of the daughter of Zion" and declare all the praises of God unless you are lifted up by God from the gates of death.
What, then, are the gates of death first of all, and the doors beside the gates? Fornication, idolatry, unbelief, love of money, vainglory, and in short the "works of the flesh", of which the Apostle says: "fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousings". All these are the gates and doors of death. These same are also the gates of Hades, which do not prevail against Peter and those like him, according to what is said: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it". These gates are living beings: the opposing powers prevail against some, but against Peter they will not prevail.
If indeed you have seen the gates and doors of death, and those of Hades, as the word has set them before you, go up to their opposites and you will see the virtues themselves as doors of heaven, "gates of the daughter of Zion", doors of life, doors of righteousness. As he says: "Open to me the gates of righteousness; entering into them I will confess to the Lord". Whether according to the first interpretation, or the second, or some other deeper one, the words in the psalm can also be applied: "Lift up the gates, O rulers of yours, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter".
These things I have said on account of "He opened the doors of heaven and rained manna upon them to eat".
9. Let us not pass over unexamined the singular form of the noun "heaven" (οὐρανοῦ) either. To those who came out of the land of Egypt God "opened the doors of heaven". When they knew in part and prophesied in part, these other doors of the remaining heavens had not yet been opened to them. The one who has gone up through the doors of the first heaven and been instructed in the first heaven will need to go up also to the gates above the first heaven. And thus, following Jesus, who has passed through all the heavens, he must come to be with the God and Father of the universe, in the way one naturally comes to be with God by following Christ.
"He rained manna upon them to eat": God gave his people ready bread from heaven "without toil", "having power for every pleasure and suited to every taste". For "into whatever" thing "anyone wished, it was transformed". And such is the nature of the word that feeds the soul: it changes according to the capacity of the one who is fed. If the word feeds an infant, it becomes milk. If a sick soul is fed, since the one who is sick eats vegetables, the word becomes vegetables. If one is perfect (of such it is written: "But solid food is for the perfect"), the word becomes solid food. This manna, then, which God rained, is all things.
10. The manna does not come to us while we sit, but while we go outside the camp, so that once we are outside we may then gather the manna. Let us see, then, what these things mean. If the camp is our body, in which the soul is shut up, the soul must no longer be in the flesh but in the spirit, and get outside the camp (I mean the camp of the body). Then it will seek and will find manna that has come out from heaven. For "he rained manna upon them to eat", and if you find it, you will say in wonder: "Man? 'What is this?'" That is why its name is called "manna", that is, "what?", like the exclamation you uttered in wonder and perplexity at the unexpected finding of the bread. This name is given to the bread: it is called manna, "and he gave them bread of heaven".
"He who is from the earth is from the earth and speaks from the earth", since he appears from the earth. But "he who comes from heaven", he brings the bread from heaven and clothes with "the image of the heavenly" those who are to eat the bread of angels. But no one who wears "the image of the earthly" can eat bread of heaven. For this reason "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God", for they are foolishness to him. Do not think, then, that anyone can eat heavenly bread while he wears "the image of the earthly".
"He gave them bread of heaven; man ate bread of angels". Do you think that the angels are blessed because they have the life, him who said: "I am the life"? The angels are blessed because they are fed on food that is not fleshly, not the kind that is cast into the privy, nor food that is excreted from the body; they are fed on heavenly food, which is assimilated into the constitution of their substance. For this food you too were taught to pray, if you understand how to obey Jesus when he says: "Give us today the supersubstantial bread", meaning: "Such 'supersubstantial' (ἐπιούσιον) 'bread', which does not pass out, which is not excreted, which is assimilated into the substance (οὐσία) of the soul, give this to us." Blessed are the angels who eat this bread, which has not come down from heaven but remains with them. We, even if we eat, eat it after it has come down. For it is written: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven". But to them it does not come down, unless perhaps a deeper and more mystical discourse will show that the living bread comes down to them too, and comes down from the Father.
For if you understand the greatness and height of the Father, and understand how "Thus says the Lord, the Most High, who dwells in the heights, holy, resting among the holy" is said, you will see that all things are below in relation to God. For the angels too are below in relation to the height of God, and so are thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and authorities. Even of the Savior, who says: The Father who sent me "is greater than I", I would say that he is below in relation to the Father. For he is also above, with the Father, since "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". But if "the Word in the beginning with God" remains so, the one below is not benefited.
Let the bread alone, then, come down to all who are below (and all generated nature is lower than God), and as it comes down, let the bread feed all things! But see how far this bread comes down as it descends: not to the earth only, but even to the lowest parts of the earth. For "he who descended is the same who also ascended above the heavens". This bread, then, comes down to all who are below, even though among those below there is a difference between some of them: they are below in relation to God but above in relation to others. The holy angels, for instance, are below in relation to God but above in relation to others, above us, for instance. Among us men ourselves, too, Moses is above in relation to us, but below in relation to Jesus the Christ. And perhaps in the case of each of the men who are below one could find someone lower still.
For who would be lower than all? The "man of sin", "the son of perdition", "he who opposes and exalts himself against everything called god or object of worship". Since, then, we men are rather below, the word urges us to go up, and says: "Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion".
"Man, then, ate bread of angels": blessed are the angels who discourse about truth and are fed by the wisdom of God and by the Word through whom all things came to be. For the principal way of life of the angels is contemplation, while their circumstantial way of life, on our account, is active. When they are sent, being "ministering spirits", "for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation", and accompany us, "encamping round about those who fear God", they do something active and circumstantial. For their proper work is to contemplate realities, to enjoy the wisdom of God, and to see the principle of the ordering of the universe. "Bread of angels", on which angels are fed, man too received. For when I discourse about God, about the world, about Christ, about his divinity and about his indwelling in a human body and soul, I eat "bread of angels". And if I examine the words of the Holy Spirit, I eat "bread of angels". For "bread of angels man ate; he sent them provisions to the full". Pray that God may send us "provisions to the full", not only to taste but also to be filled with the words of life and strengthened in them. This, however, is the principal food.
11. After this comes: "He removed the south wind from heaven and brought on the southwest wind in his power, and rained upon them flesh like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the seas, and they fell in the midst of the camp round about their tents; and they ate and were filled exceedingly, and he brought them their desire; they were not deprived of their desire". Once, while eating the manna, the sons of Israel said: "Our eyes see nothing but the manna, for we remembered 'when we sat by the pots of meat in Egypt'". And when we hear these things, we say: wretched men, who, while eating the heavenly bread, desired onions and garlic and leeks and cucumbers and melons, and compared this food at all with that one.
And we say these things when we read, and we pity them as having sinned then, not seeing that these sins occur in us too. When spiritual and divine food is at hand and we despise it and gather wealth or want to live in luxury, do we not desire to eat the foul-smelling leeks, and the onions that harm the eyes of the soul, and the garlic, sins that fill us with foul odors, and to glut ourselves on the foul odors of pleasures? And in this way, desiring the flaccid nature of the world and of bodily things, we desire melons; and having done away with what is assimilated into the substance of the soul, we want to partake of cucumbers.
If, then, we ever do such things, and have the one who supplies "provisions to the full" and gives "bread of heaven", yet want worldly things and desire the things of the world, God sends out meat to us "like dust", for we do not want the bread of heaven. And having sent out such meat, he gives it for so long, "until it comes out of the nostrils" (ours), and until he fills us with disease and weakness. For it is as if someone will say to us: "I wanted you to seek such spiritual wealth and the heavenly glory that comes from me alone, and to desire eternal things. But since you do not want to become so and to have rest, you are sick. For these wounds of the world are what you wish to have. Look at all who enjoy worldly affairs and are sick in soul because of them: they are in bile and disease and all evils because of their double-mindedness. Therefore, having understood these things and grasped the comparison drawn from the Scriptures, be content with the heavenly manna, the bread of angels, so that the foods of earthly bread, sent as a visitation, may not come upon you, and what happened while their food was still in their mouth may not come about."
And "the wrath of God came up upon them, and he killed among their fat ones", those who had become well fed, whose flesh was like the flesh of asses from their fleshly and material food. May it be granted to us to abstain from this food and to fast an acceptable fast, which the Lord accepts. For when we do not feed the mind of the flesh, we fast a good fast. At this fast it is fitting to anoint the head with oil, but not oil from a sinner, for there is also a certain oil of the sinner, of which the righteous man says: "But let not the oil of a sinner anoint my head". At this fast, then, when I abstain from the material and bodily foods that feed the mind of the flesh, I wash my face and I am not gloomy but cheerful. For this fast has become for me an occasion of spiritual and holy things in Christ Jesus, to whom belong the glory and the might to the ages. Amen.
On the 77th Psalm, Homily 4