Tractates on the Books of Holy Scripture (Tractatus Origenis) 5.1–5.5

"And Joseph came down into Egypt, and Potiphar, a eunuch of Pharaoh, chief of the cooks, an Egyptian, bought him." Although there is no doubt, dearest brothers, that in nearly all the books of the Old Testament there is a threefold meaning, that is, of prophecy, of history, and of figure, we must nevertheless labor to be able to discuss and assign each matter in its own kind and standing. For prophecy lies in the foreknowledge of things to come, history in the report of things done, figure in the likeness of things, apart from those passages that seem to serve edification or consolation or exhortation or rebuke. This reading that has just been read indicates a plain history, which praises the chastity of a holy young man and marks and condemns the unchastity of a detestable woman. Yet it nonetheless also bears the image of a figure, because, just as there can be no shadow without a body nor a body without a shadow, so there will be neither truth without figure nor figure without truth. Though these differ in the telling, they agree in the interpretation. For spiritual things are supplied beforehand in figures, while bodily things are supplied in events according to the figures. Hence this Joseph, a young man and a Hebrew, bearing the type of Christ, noble by his father, nobler by his innocence, sold by his brothers to the Ishmaelites out of envy at his revelation, had come into the house of an Egyptian. By his service and innocence and the whole faithfulness of his servitude he had won his master's heart. His face, noble even in captivity, commended to all by his youth and by his very nobility, was looked upon by his master's wife otherwise than was fitting. So this shameless and incontinent woman, in a secret part of the house and a hiding place suited to the crime, thought she could overcome the young man's chastity, now with promised gifts, now with threats and terrors. And when the same woman held him back, because he was trying to flee from the audacity of so great a crime, he stripped himself and, fleeing, left behind the very clothes by which he was held, to have the simplicity of a naked body and innocence as his witness. Then she, staining crime with crime, did not hesitate to add the recklessness of slander. For, cunning and burning in spirit, when Joseph fled her desire, which could now have no effect, she complained with feigned grief to the others and to her husband that the Hebrew young man had tried to do her the violence that she herself had attempted to inflict. For she says: "My Hebrew servant, whom you brought in to us, came in to me to mock me. For he said to me, 'Sleep with me.'" Then the husband's anger, ignorant of the facts and greatly inflamed by his wife's accusation, ordered the chaste young man, who had not mixed his conscience with the offense, to be thrust into the depths of the prison. But chastity is not alone in prison, for God was with him. Indeed even the guilty are put under his hand, because he himself was held innocent. Moreover, through the Lord he unraveled the obscurities of dreams, because his spirit had kept watch in temptation. Then, set free through the Lord, he who had served his purchaser at peril became master of the royal house without peril, and, restored to his nobility, he received from God as judge the fruit of innocence and chastity he had deserved. For so great was the virtue of chastity in him that the insolence of natural impulse, which in some supplies license for wantonness, could not excuse it away. Not bodily beauty and the shape of his limbs, which often suggest that, like a flower of hastening youth that will quickly pass, it be plucked at the opportunity of a pleasure held out; not the first years of a fresh and better age, when the still raw blood seething in the body kindles the flames of nature and turns hidden fires in the marrow, ready to seek its remedy even at the peril of modesty; not the very seclusion of the house, and in it the opportunity without any witness, as some think, which is the greatest pleasure in committing a crime, when impunity of release presents itself; not even the necessity laid on him by the authority of a commanding mistress, rushing on him more violently in her recklessness, by which kind of pressure right resolves are sometimes broken; not rewards themselves, to which even good men often yield; not accusations, not threats, not punishments, not death, could overcome the chastity of the holy young man. For nothing was so cruel, so hard, so grievous to him as committing adultery and falling from so high a step of chastity. Hence he was rightly worthy of so great a reward of divine judgment, that he was both made illustrious with a royal throne and won victory over his enemies. Therefore, dearest brothers, we must always set these and similar examples before the eyes of the mind and meditate on their like day and night. For nothing so delights a faithful soul as a whole and spotless conscience of modesty. No victory is greater than that won over desire. For he who conquered an enemy was stronger than another; but he who has crushed hostile lust was stronger than himself. He who has conquered desire has broken an evil at home. For every evil is conquered more easily than pleasure, because whatever that other evil is, it is horrid, while this is alluring, and nothing is conquered with such difficulty as what is loved through that very thing by which it harms. So he who has conquered desire has removed all fear, because fear comes down from desire. He who has conquered desire has celebrated a triumph over sin. He who has conquered desire has proved himself a true disciple of Christ. He who has conquered desire

has shown the evil of the human race lying beneath his feet. He who has conquered desire has given himself perpetual peace. He who has conquered desire has restored to himself freedom, which is hardest for the freeborn. He who has conquered desire has been superior to the world itself. Therefore, dearest brothers, as the matter itself plainly teaches, we must always meditate on chastity, which is the easier because it rests on no arts. For what is chastity but an honorable mind given by nature for the guarding of bodies, so that the modesty owed by the sexes, marked with strictness, may keep to the purpose of the race? To it belong and are fitted first of all the fear of God, care for the heavenly precepts, a mind more inclined to faith, and a spirit awed before sacred and divine religion; by these virtues that chastity of ours is guarded, so that it may not be assailed by bodily vices. But since I have said that this venerable patriarch Joseph bore the type of Christ in his acts, we must certainly compare each detail with each, so that all may agree with all. First, his father Jacob made him a tunic of various colors, as a beloved son. What does this variety indicate, if not the nations of the different peoples who were to believe in Christ and be united to his body through faith? For the variety of Joseph's tunic indicated by an image the nations of the different peoples, as I said, believing in Christ, and also the various gifts of graces of different merits coming together in the Church. That the various nations who believe in Christ are reckoned as the Lord's garment, through the human flesh which the Lord put on, he himself proves when he says through the prophet: "As I live, says the Lord, I will clothe myself with them all as with a garment." Hence it is that the patriarch Jacob, the father of this Joseph, received the spotted sheep as his wages. And David: "The queen stood," he says, that is, the Church, "in gilded clothing, wrapped about with variety." Or what would he not do for the Lord's glory who had put on the type of the Lord? For so it is written: "I saw," he says, "that the sun and the moon and eleven stars worshiped me." And again: "Those eleven sheaves bowed down, and my sheaf stood upright, and those eleven worshiped my sheaf." After this revelation of dreams, then, which he brought for us concerning the future, after the tall sheaves were lowered, as I said, into the posture of worshipers, and after the reverence granted by the sun and moon with eleven stars, which indicated the image of his parents and brothers, he attained such wisdom and knowledge, such divine understanding, that what had been shown in dreams and covered by a kind of blindness of the night itself he cleared, removing the obscurity, into the pure certainty of understanding, leaving nothing unexplained in his interpretation. And since, as has been said, this Joseph had put on the figure of the Savior in everything, he was sold by his brothers just as Christ was by the Jews, his brothers according to the flesh, and by Judas the betrayer, as the prophet Zechariah says: "They took thirty staters, the price of the beloved, at which the sons of Israel valued him." Then his tunic is sprinkled with blood so that he might be thought killed by a beast: so too the flesh of Christ, which is called a tunic, is drenched with the blood of the passion, and he who was thought dead and devoured by death afterwards rose again and lives and reigns. Joseph too was called handsome: so too David says of Christ: "Handsome in form beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips."

But now let us look at the other things that seem to bear the type of prophecy. "The woman," it says, "cast her eyes on him," thinking she could commit adultery with him. That woman, then, was a figure of the Synagogue, which, as it is written, often committed adultery after foreign gods. In a similar way it wished to hold him as an accomplice in the crime of its adultery, so that he would deny himself to be what he was, and keep the precepts of the Pharisees and scribes rather than those of the Father. For the Synagogue, whose likeness that woman bore, besides often committing the adultery of idolatry, added to the crime that, having abandoned the divine law, which it had as a husband, as the apostle explains, it was then following the tradition of the Pharisees, a tradition it would take long to discuss here. Indeed for this fornication of teaching the prophet Isaiah rebukes them, saying: "Your innkeepers mix wine with water." For they dispensed to the people an alien and tasteless sect mixed with the divine law, that is, with the pure wine of wisdom, as if mixing water with wine. And the Lord too, who had spoken before through the prophets, afterwards rebuked them in a similar way in the Gospel, saying: "Why do you transgress the commandment of God to establish your traditions?" And again: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Since, then, he did not consent to the adultery of unlawful teaching, the adulterous Synagogue laid its hand on him, seized him and held him, and strove to brand its own crime on him, the innocent one, as though he blasphemed the temple of the Lord and should be called a transgressor of the law. But he, secure in his conscience, caring nothing for any of this, stripped himself of the flesh, which he had taken up like a garment, and openly, as the apostle said, triumphed over the powers of the world through the flesh, although the tunic of his body was held in burial by the guard of the adulterous Synagogue; for it had set guards at the tomb for this purpose. "But for this," it says, "he is sent into prison." For the necessity of the time required that for another's crime, that is, for the sake of the human race, he himself should descend to the underworld as into a prison of captives, and free the souls of the captives from there, as it is written: "The Lord sets the prisoners free." Further, "he found," it says, "two eunuchs of the king's house held in prison for their sins," to whom, interpreting their dreams, he showed that after three days one of them would be restored to his service and the other would receive the sentence of death. These two eunuchs plainly outlined the figure of two peoples, who were held shut up under the sin of Adam, guilty of the transgression and liable for it. They are called eunuchs because they received a chaste rule of discipline, as David says: "The words of the Lord are chaste." Then, after the third light, when the Lord rose from the underworld and, like Joseph, revealed the obscure dreams of the law, the people of believers was released from its sins and freed from the prison of hell, and is called back, faithful and innocent, into the service of the supreme king; but the unbelieving and impious people of the Jews, because it had not believed in the tree of conversion, is hanged on the tree of transgression, as befell that other eunuch, who indicated the image of the Jews.

After this Pharaoh saw a dream of seven years of plenty and seven others of famine. The seven years, shown in seven full ears or seven fat cows, which displayed abundance of crops by their appearance, are the seven gifts of spiritual graces promised through Isaiah, the famous prophet, to the Church, which is the flesh of Christ: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of strength, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of piety, the spirit of the fear of God. These, then, are the seven spirits, like seven years in which a rich abundance of faith and piety overflows. The seven barren and lean ones, on the other hand, most surely foretold a famine of truth and righteousness that is to come in the last times. And because these times were to come, Joseph, who had put on the type of Christ, was granted a chariot and a herald. For so the Scripture reports: "And he set him in a chariot, and a herald proclaimed before him. And he set him over the whole land of Egypt, to gather grain into the granaries." So too our Lord, after he was sold by Judas, as Joseph by his brothers, and rose from the prison of the underworld, mounted the chariot of the heavenly kingdom, of which David says: "The chariot of God is ten thousandfold." For Joseph was given the name in the Egyptian language Somtofanec, which in Latin is rendered "savior of the world." Christ too received a name from God the Father, as the blessed apostle says: "And he gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father": so that he should gather the grain of faith into the granaries of the saints through these seven graces of the Spirit, as through seven years; so that, when, in that iniquity of the seven capital crimes, in which, as through another seven years, all iniquity summed up will reign under Antichrist, a famine of faith and salvation has begun, then the saints and the faithful alike might have the celebrated harvest of righteousness, so that their faith might not fail, overcome by want of the word. He had a herald too, John the Baptist, who went before his way and proclaimed, saying: "Prepare the ways of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God." He will have another herald also, the trumpet of an angel, since "God himself," it says, "will come with the trumpet of an angel," and also Elijah at the second coming. Joseph had the royal ring; and Christ too holds the chief ring of faith, with which believing souls are sealed with the sign of salvation. Joseph was clothed in fine linen and a robe; so too Christ took on, in the resurrection, holy flesh more splendid than fine linen and the robe of immortality, as he himself said: "As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself." Joseph chose for his parents and brothers the better land of Goshen and measured out grain to them sufficiently, because the famine had grown strong over the land and the land was failing from famine; so too the Lord chose a better land for his parents and brothers, that is, for the patriarchs, of whom the apostle says, "whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh"; and for his brothers, that is, the apostles and all the saints, of whom the prophet says, "I will tell your name to my brothers": namely the land of promise, which is the kingdom of God, of which land it is written: "I will please the Lord in the land of the living."

That famine which was over all the earth, we have already said, signified a famine of the divine word and of righteousness which is to come in the times of Antichrist. For then no one will preach the word of God, by which the souls of the righteous are accustomed to live, as it is written: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." No one will make the bread of the Lord's body, that is, bless the Eucharist, because it will then not be lawful to offer sacrifice to God, since all things will be polluted and unclean. And so that famine ... foretold that a famine of the holy word and of the divine law was to come; at that time only the apostles and the saints, who also have the crown of righteousness laid up in Christ, will be satisfied, as it is written: "Those who serve me will be satisfied, but you will hunger." Further, concerning this land, which will be in the kingdom of God, Isaac blessed his son Jacob thus, saying: "May God give you of the dew of heaven and the fertility of the earth abundance of grain, wine and oil in your house, and you shall be lord of your brothers." From this it is recognized that Jacob was blessed by his father not for the present but for the age to come, because not only did Jacob not have abundance of grain, wine, and oil in this age, but because of the great famine he even fled to Egypt. And not only was he not lord of his brother, but he even fled before his face, and afterwards offered him gifts, seized by fear and trembling of him. Where, then, and when will this blessing be fulfilled, if not in the kingdom of God, where there is abundance of grain and wine and oil? For the earth will give its fruit of its own accord, and all malice will be taken away, as Isaiah says: "In those days," he says, "the ox and the lion will eat straw together, the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and a little child will put his hand into the asp's den, and it will not harm him." For God will re-form the world in his kingdom to be such as it was made in the beginning, before the first-formed man sinned. After he transgressed the word of God, all things were corrupted and violated and cursed, as the Lord said: "Cursed is the earth in your work." When the form of this world has passed away, then, there will be the kingdom of the saints and the liberation of creation. This is the blessing that was prefigured in Jacob, which Joseph accordingly obtained, and all the saints who keep the faith of Christ, as the Lord himself says: "I will make them recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and the Son of Man will serve you." But let it suffice to have said a few things out of many.