Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 28 — Psalm 80 (LXX; MT 81), Homily II: vv. 9–17
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. 496–508. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.On the 80th Psalm, Homily 2
1. Of instruments, some have musical harmony, while others are out of tune. So the one who is trained in musical works and has mastered that art chooses the well-tuned harp or lyre or psaltery, and having chosen it, he displays the power that is in him and his musical art. But he flees headlong, especially if some lyre or harp or psaltery is out of tune, so that the craftsman may not be disgraced because of the instrument, as though it did not serve his art.
Why, then, have I said these things, if not because all human beings are, as it were, lyres and psalteries and harps? And God the craftsman seeks a harp musically tuned, a lyre finely tuned, a psaltery with its strings stretched as they should be. And having judged where he may find such things, God displays the heavenly music. But if God lacks his instruments, he is silent, not through any fault of his own but through the lack of instruments.
The blessed prophets, then, became instruments of God. Just as one who hears a string and the sound in the harp does not hear the harp but the musician who musically strikes the suitable instrument, so let the one who hears a prophet not think that he hears a human being, but God, who found a suitable instrument and used it as was needed. Asaph, at any rate, was an instrument of God. When I hear God the musician saying through the strings in Asaph: "Hear, my people, and I testify to you, Israel", I do not refer what is said so much to the instrument as to God who uses the instrument.
But I call the instrument blessed too, because it set itself in order and made itself suitable to receive God as he strikes his instruments. And God is there using the tongue of a righteous man as his own tongue, and God is there using the mouth of a holy man, so that one may say: "the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things".
And I say that God also uses the eyes of a righteous man: they close so that he may not see injustice, and they are opened so that he may see the heaven and the world, so that through God, who uses the intelligible instruments, he may see how all things that God made are very good. So too God uses the ears of the righteous man, and his hand: through the ears of the righteous a holy word is received, and the unapproved one is cast out. And if you ever see the hand of a believer stretched out to do good, do not think that that good deed came so much from the man as from God, who refreshes the one in need of refreshment. It comes from God, who uses the hand of the righteous. So too the feet of those who preach good tidings become beautiful through God, who uses the beautiful feet of the one who preaches the gospel. And blessed is he who becomes wholly, in all the members of the body and in all the senses, an instrument of Christ, an instrument of the Word of God, so as to say: "And I live no longer, but Christ lives in me".
2. Let us hear, then, what God says in his own instrument, Asaph, for the psalm is his: "Hear, my people, and I testify to you, Israel: if you hear me, there shall be no fresh god in you". He does not say this to them alone, but also to you who hear; for in the place where you were called not a people, you have become a people of the living God, and perhaps God prefers you to that Israel. Therefore, when he speaks, he begins not from Israel but from the people: "Hear, my people, and I testify to you, Israel". See: "Israel" is placed in the second position, while in the first is the one who is not named "Israel" but instead of "Israel" is called God's "people".
What, then, does God, who "testifies to you", say to you? "If you hear me", he says, "there shall be no fresh god in you". But let us first see how God testifies. What he says, then, he speaks with witnesses, and he calls in witnesses: at times he calls heaven and earth, at other times also a song, at other times he calls a stone that hears. For this stone, he says, shall hear what is spoken. So too you would find countless other things called in for God's testimony. For example, Christ speaking in Paul says: "I testify before God and Jesus Christ and the elect angels, that you keep these things without prejudice". Do you see? Christ in Paul too "testified before the elect angels", "before God", and indeed Paul "testified before Christ Jesus". These testimonies, then, wait for the day of judgment, "at the mouth of two witnesses or even three" or even more, so that sinners may be condemned. For Scripture says that no one must perish without testimonies. Since it cannot be done except with such witnesses, so that he may be condemned on the word of accusing witnesses, for this reason there are witnesses on the day of judgment: if the sinner perishes, the creatures are testimony. Heaven testifies against the one who perishes; the earth and the angels testify against the one who has done evil.
I am afraid that Christ Jesus too may bear witness against someone. For "the word which I spoke, that", he says, "will judge" you. So let us fear to sin, at least because of the witnesses. For the sins of the people at that time, whatever charges were brought, and were brought before witnesses, were heard before those testifying and were seen by those testifying. For example, witnesses would come forward saying: "We saw this man walking indecently with a woman and lying with her", and what the witnesses had seen condemned the one testified against. But as for our deeds, even if we have escaped the notice of men, it is not men who will come and testify against us. All things are full of angels; every house and everything on earth is full of the powers of God. Where is Christ not? "He stands in your midst". And if some sin, say to them: "The one whom you do not know, God, is everywhere".
"Where shall I go from your Spirit, and from your face where shall I flee?" If a person whom we respect is watching, we do not dare to say a word for which he would condemn us, nor to do anything blameworthy. But we despise the eyes of God and the presence of Christ, who is always present to the world; we despise the Holy Spirit and the elect angels. We do not know that all these, as though insulted by those who did not respect their eyes, will accuse us and say: "This man sinned before our eyes". For such is the sinning of the one who has believed: it is done before the eyes. "Against you alone", he says, "I sinned and did what is evil before you". These things are said because it is possible to sin even while God testifies. But the one who confesses his sin will bear witness, saying: "I did what is evil before you".
3. "If you hear me, there shall be no fresh god in you". I know a simpler way of hearing what has been said: that if someone hears God, he will not commit idolatry, for the one who hears will not have a "fresh god", nor does the one who hears the words of God worship "a foreign god". But when I examine it more carefully and wish to hear the divinity of the Holy Spirit, I dare to say that all human beings have within them either the true God or a "fresh god", a "foreign" one. For example, "all the gods of the nations are demons". The one who receives the working of a demon, who sins by the inspiration of an evil spirit, such a one has within himself the evil spirit, the unclean demon, worshiped as a god. But I would say that those who are called gods but are not gods are in those who are slaves to sins. For when they deify money and exalt it as a god, the demon of idolatry is in them; therefore "covetousness" is called "idolatry" by Paul. So if you are overcome by the mind of the flesh, a spirit of fornication is in you, and you have become a temple of the spirit of fornication. So another becomes a temple of the spirit of anger and of the other sins.
If, then, you wish that there not come to be in you an improvised god, a fresh god, the one who is not truly God, hear God: "For if you hear me", he says, "there shall be no fresh god in you". For in the case of common idolatry, the image of silver and gold is not, as it were, in the idolater himself, while the word says here: "There is no fresh god in you". The saint says: "Or do you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me?" But the sinner would say: "of the evil spirit that speaks in me", "of the anger that speaks in me", "of the love of money that speaks in me", "of the vainglory that speaks in me". And in the case of the other evils too, one may hear the voices of demons. They use as prophets of their demonic condition those who are receptive to the service of demonic words.
And it is likely that when we read the ancient narrative, that there were certain priests of idols, prophets of idols and prophets of abominations and prophets of Baal, or anything like these, we pity those who prophesied to Baal. We do not see that we too are sometimes prophets of anger and say: "Thus says anger", and instead of "Thus says the Lord Almighty" we in effect say "Thus says anger". For just as there the Spirit of the Lord Almighty fills the prophet with ordered prophecy, and one may hear a prophet speaking what is His, so it is with the opposites. When we become angry, the spirit of anger, using us as prophets, speaks its own things. But when we are calmed, as if we had become other men than we were, we no longer say those things; for the spirit that worked in us has departed. So too with the other sins. Therefore "with all watchfulness keep your heart". We have explained these things, indeed, because of "there shall be no fresh god in you".
4. "Nor shall you worship a foreign god": everyone who honors something worships that thing. To establish that everyone who honors something worships that which he honors, we shall say this. Idolaters do not worship idols for the sake of the idols so much as for the sake of the things they honor, so that, obtaining what they honor, they may have those things for the sake of which they also worship the idols. For they worship idols in order to become rich, since they imagine that the idols provide this to them. And they worship idols in order, let us say, to be glorified. So they honor, more than the idols, those things for the sake of which they also worship the idols.
So then each of us, when, not hearing "You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone", does something else and accepts something else, worships "a foreign god" and does not hear the one who says: "For I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt". Do not suppose that he brought only them up out of the land of Egypt but did not bring you up. See where you were: when you were a gentile, when in your reasonings you thought of nothing but the clay and the affairs of the world and the empty things of life that are thought to be goods, then you will see that you were in Egypt. The Lord your God, then, having removed you from bodily things, brought you up above Egypt and led you to the mountain of God, to faith in Christ Jesus. Therefore it is said both to you and to those who honor the idols, who in effect, in some new way, worship not the idols so much as those things for the sake of which they honor them: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt".
5. Next let us see what God commands us. For he speaks a certain phrase for which I need his help, that I may understand what he says: "Widen your mouth, and I will fill it". Let those who advise us not to allegorize take note, and let them not allegorize, but let them consider how God says: "Widen your mouth, and I will fill it", and let them say how one must widen the mouth. Does the word want us to open it and make the lips wider? And how is it not shameful to think that God said such things? How, then, will anyone explain these things without applying tropology to the passage? How can one conceive what has been said in a manner worthy of God? For the promise too, which says: "and I will fill it", urges us to seek, so that we may understand how to widen the mouth; for when the mouth has been widened, God will fill it.
Consider one who writes little and does not wish the surface on which he writes to hold more letters: he does not widen that on which he writes, but writes in a small space. But the one who wishes to write more looks for something larger to write on, which will hold more. In the same way, understand with me that the mouth of our soul is widened by continual meditation on the sacred writings, and is narrowed when we do not know even a psalm, when we do not know even a saying of the Gospel, nor anything else of the sacred writings. We widen the mouth, then, through meditation on the sacred writings. And though at the beginning we do not know what the writings say, if we meditate on them, we begin to fill the mouth with them, wishing through meditation on the writings to remember the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels and the Apostles. And you have a promise: "If you widen your mouth, I will fill it". For as to all those things that we have done to take up the sacred writings (and if it is possible to say, with thanksgiving, confessing and giving thanks to God: "But I know truly that he who said, 'Widen your mouth, and I will fill it', speaks the truth"), the more I widen the mouth, the more I meditate, the more it is filled. And I come having meditated on nothing but the letter, and it is filled with the mind of the divine writings.
I have prayed that my mouth may be filled, with you working together with me and joining the struggle in prayers, so that I may not be at a loss for what to say. You see the benefit that comes to you from the letter. I am confident, then (and I advise and exhort you too to trust the one who says: "Widen your mouth, and I will fill it"), that it will help if, in order to establish what is said still further, I set beside it something of this kind that happens among the brethren. Often someone comes seeking to learn ideas that lie in the sacred Scripture, and lie hidden, though he does not know even a saying of the Gospel, nor remembers an apostolic word, nor knows what a prophet says and what is written in this or that book. One might fittingly say to him: "'Widen your mouth', if you wish your mouth to be filled through learning these things about which you inquire". If, then, someone is going to understand the sacred writings, let him have no other preparation than the one he has from the memory of the Scriptures. For we speak divine things "not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual".
6. God said: "Widen your mouth, and I will fill it". But God accuses those who do not hear, and says: "And my people did not hear my voice, and Israel did not heed me". This is to be heard in a more general way on account of the sinners among the people, whether that people or this one. For let this be said of all who sin: "My people did not hear my voice", and of all who stumble: "and Israel did not heed me". But if you wish Christ also to be the speaker, you will not sin; for he prophesies and says about the people: "My people did not hear my voice, and Israel did not heed me". The Son of God was present, Christ was sojourning among them, and Israel did not heed, but they went "according to the pursuits of their hearts".
There is also another thing to set beside this from the letter. Whenever it happens that one must answer those who slander Scripture, I think it fitting to use it, just as here too we use "My people did not hear my voice". In the Gospel according to John a saying of the Savior is written thus: "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because the one whom he sent, him you do not believe". What was said is beyond slander and well said. But the followers of Valentinus and of Basilides seize upon the wording and say: "So he introduced another God besides the God of the Law and the Prophets. Jesus Christ says to the Jews, to whom the Law and the Prophets were read: 'You have neither heard his voice nor seen his form'. Therefore the Jews never heard the true God, the one other than the God of the Law; rather, the Lord Jesus Christ brought a new God, other than the God of the Jews".
A guileless and simple soul heard what was said, "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form". It hears those people maintaining that the Jews did not see the form of the true God, although God appeared to Abraham or to Moses, and it is led astray and goes out from the church, and leaves this behind as an unlearned doctrine; and it flees to the heresy as if to knowledge and as if to wisdom. Since, then, the wording in the Gospel that says: "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form" is slandered, we shall refute those who slander and misinterpret what is written.
And here, at any rate, he said to the people who heard the Law and the Prophets: "The people did not hear my voice". It is said in place of "they did not understand nor comprehend what is mine"; and it is not because the prophets were not speaking that they did not hear nor act. So too in the case of the Savior, refuting the Jews of that time who did not understand what was written in the prophets, it has been said: "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because the one whom he sent, him you do not believe". For if you had heard the voice of God prophesying, you would surely have received Christ, whom God sent; but since you did not receive the one whom God sent, "you have neither heard his voice nor seen his form".
And you will not sin in saying to Jews who read the Hebrew writings and study, as they think, the Law and the Prophets — you will not sin in saying to the Jews: "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because the one whom he sent, him you do not believe". They say that they believe Moses too, but my Lord Jesus Christ refutes them as not believing, saying: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?"
"And Israel did not heed me". Everyone who sins does not heed God. For it is impossible for sin to come unless, in sinning, one does not heed God; rather, it is through the failure to heed God that sin lives and acts, and its palace is established in us, when we ought to hear: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body".
7. "And I sent them away", from the altar, from the temple, "according to the pursuits of their hearts". For he repaid them what was worthy "of the pursuits of their heart". And "they shall walk in their pursuits", not "in the pursuits" of God's commandments and his words. "If my people had heard me, if Israel had walked in my ways, I would have humbled their enemies with nothing". If ever enemies have prevailed against the people and were not humbled, the people suffered this because they did not hear God nor walk in the ways of God. Such things, said to them, are said also to us. For if we hear God, if we walk in his ways, hearing the mysteries in the Scriptures, God will humble "with nothing" our "enemies". That is, he will do it not even with toil on our part, nor with our struggling, but he will humble the enemies, himself coming to be in us, so that through us he may humble the enemies.
"And on those who afflict them I laid my hand": for he will lay his punishing hand on those who afflict, whether angels of the evil one, or the evil one himself, or men worked upon by the evil one against us. God lays on his hand: "The enemies of the Lord lied to him". If anyone is an enemy of the Lord, he certainly lies to God; that is, he does not say true things to God, nor does he say true things about God, "and their time shall be forever".
"And he fed them with the fat of wheat": so that those too who have become enemies of God may not despair of themselves, he announces the kindness of God, shown even toward enemies. We too were enemies to God, but his kindness reached us. For hear: "that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself", and: "We beseech on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God". And why else did Christ Jesus come, if not to dissolve "the enmity in his flesh, having abolished the law of commandments in decrees, that he might create the two in himself into one new man, making peace"? And being enemies, we were reconciled to God. So then we were enemies; "the time" of these enemies, then, "shall be forever".
And having rescued the enemies, God "fed", he says, "them with the fat of wheat". I seek a certain wheat, that I may see the fat of the wheat and understand how God feeds us from "the fat of the wheat": "Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit". So then my Lord Jesus Christ himself was wheat, was a grain of wheat; its rich fat was fine flour. In him and from his death we have received. For when he fell (and I say he fell when he was killed and crucified for us), the fat of that wheat became food in us. Moses too prophesies about this fat of the wheat in Deuteronomy, saying: "He brought them up upon the strength of the land, he fed them the produce of the fields; they sucked honey out of the rock, and oil out of the solid rock, butter of cows and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs and rams, of sons of bulls and of goats, with the kidney-fat of wheat, and blood of the grape". All these things are Christ, our true food, the true cup.
And he himself "fed" us "with the fat of wheat, and with honey from the rock he satisfied" us, "but the rock" is "Christ". "He brought them up upon the strength of the land, he fed them the produce of the fields; they sucked honey out of the rock". We who believe in Christ are those who suck honey; for what is sweeter than the words of God? We suck honey, then, from the rock. For this reason this rock also gives us this word, which is honey, about which we say: "How sweet to my throat are your sayings, beyond honey and the honeycomb". Solomon too speaks in Proverbs about this honey that we suck from the rock: "Having found honey, eat what is enough"; and elsewhere: "Eat honey, son, for it is good". And does he command me to eat honey, as though eating honey were a good thing?
Again I allegorize, and again some are indignant at the allegory. So the one who stumbles at what is said will again say this: "Eat honey, son, for this is good": it is good to eat honey, and God in the Holy Spirit commands us to eat honey. But perhaps the word bids us eat the sweet word, the one from the rock, so that, loving always to be nourished by the holy word, we may eat both milk and honey in Christ Jesus, to whom belong the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.
On the 80th Psalm, Homily 2