Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 26 — Psalm 77 (LXX; MT 78), Homily IX: vv. 65–72 (the Lord awakes, David the shepherd)
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. 465–478. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the 77th Psalm, Homily 9
1. On the words "And the Lord was awakened as one who sleeps" we ask to receive wakefully a word from God; and on "as a mighty man and one surfeited with wine" we wish to speak, if God grants it to us, he who is sober toward the worthy and who keeps himself, for those who are fit, in the dignity of his greatness. Let us, then, begin our discourse from here. Paul, so far as regards his progress according to God and his speaking from the truth – "as many of us, then, as are perfect, let us be so minded" – was strong as one perfect, and so strongly that he could say: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me", Christ Jesus my Lord. But since he was strong, he saw that the weak do not need him strong; therefore he became to the weak as weak, that he might gain the weak.
Out of love, then, Paul, who "can do all things", "became weak to the weak", since his weakness was more useful to the weak than his strength; if he had kept that strength and guarded his dignity, the weak would not have profited. In the same way Paul saw some who, because they were lawless, were unable to hear him as a man of the law and to take in the explanation of the law, which contains "a shadow of the good things to come". And he saw that to such people one must not hand on the heavenly things of the law, but that he had to conform himself to them. He was in no way "lawless toward God, but" was in every way "under the law of Christ" Jesus, and yet he had to play the part of the lawless man. For the pretence of lawlessness brings salvation to the lawless, so that they are no longer truly lawless. Therefore Paul became "to the lawless" not lawless but "as lawless, not being lawless toward God but being under the law of Christ", that he might gain "the lawless". For Paul knew that Christ had redeemed him from the curse of the law, becoming a curse on behalf of him and of all who believe, in order to loose the curse of all who are under the law.
Knowing these things, Paul imitated those under the law, having as his aim to free those under the law from the law by imitating them. My Lord Christ Jesus, "when the fullness of the time came", was sent forth by the Father to be born "of a woman", to be born "under the law", not in order to serve the law – for "Lord" indeed "of the sabbath is the Son of man" – but in order to set free from the law. Just so, Paul became an imitator of Christ, "to those under the law as under the law, that those under the law" he might gain. But he also saw others who Judaized and had turned away from the common life of men, wishing to Judaize with a show of keeping Judaism, and to such as these too, then, Paul became a Jew. For if he had shown what he really thought, and had presented himself as sharing hearth and company with those from the Gentiles, he would not have gained Jews. And indeed, if ever he fell in with Jews, he joined in Judaizing with them so far as to purchase the Jews: he circumcised Timothy, and he shaved himself and brought an offering to the altar. For he saw that this was profitable for the Jews, that they might be gained.
If you have understood, I tell you, how Paul condescended to so many for no other reason than for the benefit of men, then seek, I pray, Paul's original. For Paul did not do these things in imitation of you. Paul's original, then, was Christ; for "be imitators of me", he says, "just as I also am of Christ". For you would find that Christ, before Paul, became weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak.
For he was crucified out of weakness, and was "born under the law", as I said before from the Epistle to the Galatians, and this is clear from the Gospels too. For he too was in the synagogues, himself gathering with the Jews. For if, seeing no use in his gathering with them, he had not gathered, he would not have gained those who were gained by his gathering. And he himself also kept the other precepts of the law, so that those under the law might not turn away from him but might come to him and be helped. What must one say, except that to the Jews he was a Jew? For he was so much a Jew to the Jews that the Samaritan woman said: "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask to drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans". And so too Christ became lawless to the lawless; therefore "he was reckoned with the lawless".
Further, as to Christ's having become lawless to the lawless, we shall take from the Gospel that, contrary to the custom of the Pharisees and to the Jewish way of life, he ate and drank with sinners and with tax collectors, before Paul did: "to the lawless as lawless, not being lawless toward God but under the law of Christ, that he might gain the lawless". Paul did all things in imitation of Christ, and Christ in imitation of the Father. For indeed the God and Father of the universe – if he did not show fellow-feeling for created nature, the race of men and the substance of the other rational living beings would not be helped. For this reason, then, God becomes to each one such as each one, so far as depends on his own choice, makes himself. If you neglect God, God says to you: "You forsook me, and I will forsake you". If, on hearing: "Give no sleep to your eyes nor slumber to your eyelids", you fall asleep, God does not watch over you. Though he is awake to creation, he sleeps for you alone and for those like you.
Thus he himself too is free from anger; for passion does not touch God. But when you commit many sins, you kindle for yourself an anger called "the anger of God". When God is angry, he speaks the words of one who is angry. For a father, while angry yet having undergone nothing, can put forth words to his son as if from anger, as if from agitation, in order to turn the infant back, in order to discipline the child. And God, if we need threatening words, can he not speak the words of one who is angry without anger? So too God never repents; his gifts of grace and his every deed are without repentance. But since there is one who repents, it has been written about you, the one who repents.
For when you sin, God is another to you. But if you change, he says: "I have repented toward this people, saying that it has become worthy to be ruled no longer by Saul but now by David". And such was the meaning of "I have repented that I anointed Saul as king". Never, then, when you read these human passions ascribed to God, suppose that God is truly subject to passion. For, as I said before, no one supposes of Paul that he is truly weak when he says: "Who is weak, and I am not weak?" Nor does anyone suppose that he is truly burned with the burning of those who desire, when he says: "Who is made to stumble, and I am not burned?" If so, much more must you think of God that he is impassible in every way. Nevertheless, when you sin, God sleeps for you, and if you repent, "the Lord was awakened as one who sleeps".
2. I must anticipate something of the next verse, so that "the Lord was awakened as one who sleeps" may become still clearer. I say that an enemy has no power against you while God is awake for you; but if the enemy is said to have power against you, God is asleep for you. While Jesus was awake, the contrary winds could do nothing, the waves could do nothing, the sea could do nothing. But when he had fallen asleep, the contrary wind blew, the waves rose up, and the boat was in danger of being covered by the waves, until those sailing in it, awakening to prayer, roused Jesus; and he rose and rebuked the sea, stopped the contrary winds, and made a calm. So understand, I pray, about the enemies too, the opposing powers. They have power at times, if you sleep and, because you sleep, God falls asleep for you; but when you rise, he is awakened, "as one who sleeps, the Lord", and strikes your "enemies in the back".
Who is worthy to make propitious the one who, if I may so name him, takes pleasure in him? For there is one who embitters the Lord, and one who sweetens the Lord. Such-and-such a life of mine embitters the Lord, and such-and-such deeds sweeten the Lord. For example, "May my meditation be sweet to him", says the prophet, and again, "They embittered you, O Lord". And not only as "one who sleeps was the Lord awakened", but also "as a mighty man and one surfeited with wine".
For what do we not make God? If I had said that God rises up "as a mighty man and one surfeited with wine", which of the fault-finders would not have seized on me, saying: "You attribute drunkenness and surfeit to God, you, a man who has been taught that not even human 'drunkards will inherit the kingdom of God'"? Yet the Holy Spirit, having free authority to speak, said that God at times rises up "as a mighty man and one surfeited with wine". For perhaps we, as it were, stupefy God and make him drunk, just as we make him sleep, be angry, and the rest, so that God is not sober toward us but becomes "as a mighty man and one surfeited". But suppose we turn back so as also to live soberly, according to what was said by the Apostle about someone: "sober, temperate, hospitable, orderly". If we become sensible, God is awakened for us "as a mighty man and one surfeited with wine".
3. For when he punishes, he is "surfeited with wine", but when he ceases from anger, he rises up "as a mighty man and one surfeited with wine". And what does God do when God is awakened "as one who sleeps", "as a mighty man surfeited with wine"? "And he struck", it says, "their enemies in the back; he gave them an eternal reproach". He said: "He struck their enemies". What need is there of the addition "in the back" (εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω)? But let us see. The one who flees God turns his back to him. Such was the one we mentioned the other day: the dragon, the fleeing serpent, the crooked one, who is slain by the holy and great sword of God. Since, then, his enemies flee God, for this reason divine justice pursues them and strikes them, not in the chest. For those who look God in the face and stand before him are not struck; but when someone flees God, then he is struck, being at once an enemy and one who has cast God "behind" himself. Therefore God, cast "behind", strikes "in the back" the one who casts him behind.
Do you wish to learn who casts God behind? Hear the forty-ninth Psalm; here it says: "You cast my words behind you". The one who casts "the words behind" has cast Christ "behind"; and having cast him "behind", he will be wounded by him in the back. But who is not struck "in the back" as a fugitive from God, but is honored as a friend of God? The one who takes up the cross and follows behind Christ – you cannot be struck "in the back". For your back is guarded, not by anyone who is behind you; rather, it is by what is Jesus' that your back is guarded – for you look upon the back of Jesus – and it is cared for and guarded and walled about. And your back has a shield, and you are indeed free of care, so long as you walk behind the Lord your God and so long as you follow behind Jesus, since nothing will wound you "in the back".
4. And what else does God do to his enemies? "He gave them an eternal reproach". We know that Daniel too says concerning the resurrection that "some shall rise to eternal life, others to reproach and eternal shame". Not first "to shame", then "to reproach", but "to reproach", then "to shame". For when you are shameless about your sins, the one who wishes to lead you to conversion reproaches you. But when you have been reproached and have heard the reproach, you will be ashamed, though before you were shameless and insensible of your evils. Therefore rightly in Daniel too the order is kept for those who, because of their sins, are to be first in reproach and second in shame.
That reproaching is a holy work of the Savior is written in the Gospel: "He began to reproach the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent". Rightly "he began to reproach", so that by beginning to reproach he might call them forth to suffer nothing worthy of reproach. Here, then, Jesus begins to reproach. If you repent, he has at once both begun reproaching and ceased, and the reproach has become beginning and end at once. But if, when the Word has begun to reproach you for your sins, you do not repent, your reproach is kept for you even to the resurrection. And then Jesus gives an eternal reproach to those who did not repent at being reproached before. Sinners, then, will receive eternal reproach, but the righteous eternal glory. Just as the former are reproached because they did not repent of their sins, so the latter hear their praises. And perhaps in the age to come there is a holy one who keeps and nourishes the holy man: the one who is praised by God unceasingly and eternally for goods of short duration. For he will not receive praises for thirty years because he did well for thirty years; rather, he will enjoy the praises forever.
I have set these things, understood as the opposite case, beside "he gave them an eternal reproach".
5. And "he rejected the tent of Joseph, and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, and he chose the tribe of Judah". According to the letter, Jeroboam, and after him his son, laid claim in the schism to the rule of the ten tribes; "and a ruler did not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his parts", until Christ came, for whom the eternal, royal throne was reserved. According to the letter, then, "he rejected the tent of Joseph and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim" means this: he did not wish there to be a king from Joseph, nor a ruler from Ephraim. For he chose the tribe of Judah, so that the people might be ruled from Judah. Shall we, then, stop at the narrative alone? Or do we also say that this text is a prophecy about the things that were to happen in the times of Solomon – for the psalm is Asaph's, and this one, I think, is older? Or is something symbolic also signified in these things?
I venture, then, to say that the schism of the people at that time was a prophecy of the schisms and heresies of the true Jerusalem, the church of God. At that time those from the tribes of Israel did not remain under the rule of the seed of David; those who could not bear the harshness of Rehoboam said: "We have no portion in David, nor inheritance in the son of Jesse". So too, up to the present, those who depart from the church on various pretexts say the words "We have no portion in David, nor inheritance in the son of Jesse". They blame bishops, or they say they are fleeing the sins among the people, as though they themselves were pure from sins. And some even say these words nakedly, so that they need no interpretation.
Ask, then, the Marcionites: "Do you have 'a portion in David' and 'an inheritance in the son of Jesse'?" He answers: "We have no 'portion in David nor inheritance in the son of Jesse'." For they have denied "the one who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh". And ask those of Valentinus: "Do you have 'a portion in David' and 'an inheritance in the son of Jesse'?" This one too answers and will say: "I have come to know another God, greater than the God of David the son of Jesse, greater than the one whom Jesse worshiped." Therefore those of Valentinus too say plainly: "We have no 'portion in David nor inheritance in the son of Jesse'." So go to Basilides: he will tell you the same. And in general most of the heresies will agree even in the wording, and will say what was said at that time by the schism: "We have no portion in David nor inheritance in the son of Jesse". All those, then, are as it were from Jeroboam and from the tribe of Joseph.
But why from the tribe of Joseph and from the tribe of Ephraim is especially worth examining according to tropology. What I mean will be clear, God granting it in Christ, from citing a text found in Ezekiel, together with an explanation that has come down to us and fits the prophetic passage well. It is said to Jerusalem: "Your father an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite". And I used to hear a tradition on the passage, as follows. Abraham, before he became Abraham, before the promises, was by race an Amorite because of his way of life; and Sarah, correspondingly to Abraham, was once by race a Hittite. And they came from those nations, living as sojourners among them, which God afterward destroys. Those who handed down the tradition, then, say this. Suppose a man is wicked, and is the son of a man who was formerly a Gentile but later a believer. Someone might say to him: "Your father was a Gentile, your father was an idolater"; but when he repented, he might say to him: "Your father was holy, your father was righteous". He would not be referring to one father and then another, but to the same man before he believed and to him after he believed. And the one who said this would not have lied. So, since Jerusalem has become a sinner, she hears: "'Your father Abraham, an Amorite', was the Abraham before he believed, the one who had not yet been addressed by God"; and Sarah, the wife of that Abraham, "she was your mother"; "for being a sinner, you are not the son of Abraham the righteous; being unbelieving, you are not the son of Abraham who believed".
6. You have understood the text in Ezekiel and what has been handed down on it by way of explanation, not contemptibly, as I think. If so, come also to "he rejected the tent of Joseph and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim". The "tent of Joseph": those who are from him, namely Ephraim and Manasseh; and these, Ephraim and Manasseh, are sons of Joseph and of the Egyptian Asenath. When, then, God "rejected the tent of Joseph", he rejected those who came from the Egyptian woman. For in rejecting the tribe of Ephraim he rejects not the son of the righteous Joseph but the son of the Egyptian Asenath. And each of us too runs the risk of being the son of someone wicked, the same man being remembered at times as he was when he was wicked before. But if we become virtuous, we are sons of that virtuous man, as he was when he was righteous afterward. For example, I would venture to say that the disciple of Paul the betrayer is the one who betrays those who have learned the word; but the disciple of Paul the Apostle is the one who has imitated Paul's life and apostleship.
"And he chose the tribe of Judah" because of Christ; for it is evident that our Lord has sprung from Judah. If, then, you hear: "He rejected the tent of Joseph", hear it as said about the heresies. If you hear: "and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim", hear what is said as about the heterodox, as we have observed in our work on Hosea.
"Mount Zion, which he loved": is it this lifeless one, or the one of which it is often said: "But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem"? "And he built his sanctuary as of unicorns". The other versions have: "and heights his sanctuary", showing that "of unicorns" (μονοκερώτων) too was put in place of "lofty" (ὑψηλοῦ). And perhaps he now figuratively names as "unicorns" those who are in God. They gore their enemies with one horn and say: "In you we shall gore our enemies", and "He will exalt the horn of his people". It is one horn, not the horns of the people, that God exalts.
"In the earth he founded it", the tribe of Judah which is from Christ, "forever, and he chose David his servant". We have often shown that David is named in place of Christ. In Ezekiel, David the servant of God is prophesied as going to shepherd the people, to turn back what strays, to seek out what is lost and to heal what is broken. There one must not think that this is said about David the man; it is said about our Savior. For him God "chose" as "servant", he being both his Son and his servant.
"And he took him up from the flocks of the sheep; from behind the ewes in labor he took him". It was not that the word had nothing else to name in David's shepherding than the ewes in labor. Rather, it named them so in order to praise David as one who acted as midwife to the sheep and received the newborn. For such is the holy man: he acts as midwife to the offspring of the righteous man. For example, since "the midwives feared God", he made houses for them. The midwives who fear God are those who act as midwife to the offspring, so that the works of virtue, the righteous deeds, may be born whole.
It is, then, the work of a good shepherd to be "behind the ewes in labor", from among whom he was taken. A little while ago I was speaking about what is behind. Do you see that he is both in front of you, so that you may follow him, and behind you? For he can be both here and there, since he is not a body confined to one place only. And he is "behind" you when he delivers you, when you are in labor and give birth. And what are you in labor with, and how are you delivered, if not when you say: "From the fear of you, O Lord, we conceived in the womb, and we were in labor and gave birth; we have made the spirit of your salvation upon the earth"? If in this way "from the fear" of the Lord "you conceive in the womb", if in this way "you are in labor" so that "you may give birth", seek the midwife. Christ comes, whom God took "from behind the ewes in labor to shepherd Jacob his servant and Israel his inheritance". These words are not in vain either. Where the people is meant, the more human name Jacob has been used; but where an inheritance is meant, the better and more perfect name Israel. For we know that the name Israel was given to him as a prize for having wrestled well.
"To shepherd", then, "Jacob his servant and Israel his inheritance". "And he shepherded them" – not David but Christ – "in the innocence of his heart". Jesus alone has no wickedness (κακία); he is a stranger to all wickedness. For "sin he did not commit, nor was deceit found in his mouth". The other versions have rendered it: "in the perfection of his heart". So, then, Christ shepherds us "in the innocence of his heart", and "with the discernment of the hands", it says, "his own, he guided them". Those whom he shepherds, he shepherds "by the innocence of the heart" – the name of innocence is fitting where he shepherds. But those whom he manages "with the discernment of the hands", he guides and shows them the way. Blessed, then, are those who are worthy to be guided with the discernment of the hands of Christ; for, guided by him, they will reach the Father and God of the universe, to whom belong the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.
Of the Homilies on the 77th Psalm, Homily 9