Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series

Contents

Reading pages: 1–7 · 8–13 · 14–20 · 22–26 · 28–32 · 33–37 · 38–41 · 42–45 · 46–49 · 50–53 · 54–59 · 60–64 · 65–69 · 70–75 · 76–77 · 78–85 · 86–92 · 93–103 · 104–112 · 113–117 · 118–131 · 132–137 · 138–144 · 145

1. 1Origen explains how Christ silenced the Sadducees, why only a true disciple can rightly call him “Teacher,” and how the commandments are ranked under the two great commandments of love.
2. 3One who loves iniquity or rejects discipline hates himself and so cannot love his neighbour as himself.
3. 4All the law and the prophets, even their obscure parts, hang on love of God and neighbour, which opens their meaning; Paul's hymn to love and his confidence in Romans 8 illustrate it.
4. 5Christ's question about David's son exposed the Pharisees, who knew only his human descent and not his divinity as the eternal Word, Wisdom, and priest of Psalm 110.
5. 7The “sitting at the right hand” of Psalm 110 must be understood figuratively of the Son's kingdom, since a bodily reading leads to absurdities.
6. 8God makes Christ's enemies his footstool not to destroy them but to save them, as the Scriptures on the “footstool” and Paul on the final subjection show.
7. 9Origen distinguishes Christ's disciples from the crowds, explains the “seat of Moses” and its counterpart in the Church, warns church leaders who demand titles or impose unbearable burdens, and reads the law's commands about Passover, phylacteries, and fringes spiritually.
8. 12Ambition for honour and titles is found in the Church too, among deacons, presbyters, and bishops; the true disciple seeks spiritual first places, calls no one on earth teacher or father, and follows Christ's humility.
9. 13Christ's woes, like the law's curses, come from a good God for the correction of sinners, and whoever shuts others out of the kingdom shuts himself out.
10. 14The scribes and Pharisees shut the kingdom by opposing Christ and his followers, and bad Christian teachers and clergy do the same by their example, greed, and unjust excommunications.
11. 15Teachers who open the deeper sense of Scripture open the kingdom; those who reject allegorical interpretation and keep to the letter take away the key of knowledge.
12. 16On the proselyte made twice a son of Gehenna, degrees of punishment, oaths by the temple and altar read as Scripture and the heart, and tithing small things while neglecting judgment, mercy, and faith.
13. 20“Scribes” and “Pharisees” figuratively are literalists and the self-righteous; the small observances of piety are seasonings of the weightier matters, and true cleanness begins within.
14. 22The cup and dish are the words and narratives of Scripture and of teaching, whose inner sense matters more than outward eloquence.
15. 23The law and prophets are cups and dishes whose inner, spiritual sense Christ's disciples seek, while the scribes and Pharisees keep to the outward sense.
16. 24Hypocrites are like whitewashed tombs: feigned righteousness and chastity are dead, and pretence is found even among those who claim martyrdom or church office.
17. 25The scribes and Pharisees are guilty not for building the prophets' tombs but for completing their fathers' crimes by killing Christ and his messengers; Origen reports a tradition that Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, was killed for defending Mary's virginity.
18. 26Jesus named Zechariah, not John, because the Pharisees did not kill John; God punishes a nation only when its sins reach full measure; figuratively, the prophets' tombs are the letter of Scripture, whose spiritual sense literalists and heretics kill.
19. 28Origen explains which prophets Jerusalem killed, citing books outside the canon with caution, and reads Christ's lament as his constant will in every generation to gather God's scattered children.
20. 29When Christ left the temple, the kingdom passed from the Jews to the Gentiles; each believer is a temple that Christ will leave desolate if he sins.
21. 30Figuratively, the saints intercede for the human temple; the sinner is a temple destroyed little by little; and the Old Testament's letter is a temple to be rebuilt more spiritually, while heresies sit in it like Antichrist.
22. 32The Mount of Olives figures the Church of the Gentiles; the disciples who ask privately are the more advanced, and Christ's twofold coming is also his coming into the soul, first in humility and then in glory to the perfect.
23. 33The many who come saying “I am the Christ” are above all false interpretations of Scripture and feigned virtues; doctrinal error, even among churchmen, is worse than moral failure, and every counterfeit of truth or virtue is Antichrist.
24. 34Origen asks, on the simple sense, how hearing “battles” differs from hearing “reports of battles.”
25. 35Figuratively, the battles and reports of battles are the conflicts of heresies and philosophies that the advanced Christian must hear and discern without alarm before the Word's glorious coming into the soul.
26. 36On the bodily sense, the world, having a beginning and an end, sickens before its dissolution, and scarcity breeds wars among nations.
27. 37Wars, famines, and pestilences return when Christians cease to be the salt and light that restrain the adverse powers; God judges in parts to give room for repentance, and the coming pains are meant to destroy the seeds of sin in the ungodly.
28. 38Figuratively, the wars among nations are rival heresies, the famines a lack of understanding in reading Scripture, and the pestilences the teachings of Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides, which the one awaiting Christ's coming in the soul must see without harm.
29. 39Persecutions and the preaching of the Gospel to all nations are still to be fully completed before the end, since many peoples have not yet heard it; figuratively, the one advancing to perfection suffers tribulations and false teachings, and is saved by holding to the apostolic tradition.
30. 40Origen interprets Daniel's seventy weeks, reckoning a week as seventy years, of the period from Christ's coming to the destruction of Jerusalem, which will remain desolate until the end; he denies that earthly Jerusalem will be rebuilt except for Antichrist.
31. 41On the literal sense, Christ's warnings about flight, the great tribulation, and false christs are fulfilled in the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
32. 42Spiritually, the holy place is Scripture, in which the false word of heresy stands as the abomination of desolation; the reader must flee from the letter to the mountains of spiritual sense and not turn back to what he has left.
33. 43Spiritually, the pregnant and nursing are souls in whom the word is still immature and who are easily seduced by heresy; the praiseworthy flight is from sexual immorality, every sin, and false doctrine, to the mountains of the Scriptures, while Christ is awake in the soul.
34. 45The true sabbath is rest from evil works while doing good; one without good works is easily overcome by false doctrine, the greatest tribulation, and God “shortens the days” by cutting away false additions to Scripture.
35. 46False christs are heretical teachers who cite either secret writings (“the wilderness”) or twisted canonical Scripture (“the houses”); the truth shines like lightning through all Scripture and in the Church alone, and the eagles are believers gathered to Christ's passion.
36. 48On the literal sense, Origen reports views of how the heavenly lights will fail at the end, whether by fire or by exhaustion, and of the sign of the cross appearing in heaven, with parallels from Isaiah, Joel, and Zechariah.
37. 49Figuratively, the darkened sun is the devil, the moon the church of heretics, and the falling stars false teachers and fallen Christians; the mourning tribes of Zechariah are grades of sinners among laity, teachers, and clergy.
38. 50On Christ's coming on the clouds, Origen weighs literal, combined, and spiritual readings, suggesting living and rational clouds and the Word's daily coming in Scripture; the angels gather the elect, living and dead, from earth and from successive heavens.
39. 52The great trumpet of the angels is illuminated by the silver trumpets of Numbers that gathered and moved Israel's camps from the four quarters, a shadow of the word's great voice and of the last trumpet in Paul.
40. 53The fig tree that buds in spring figures the soul and the world in which Christ's hidden life comes forth, the Church as its tender branch, and the barren people of the circumcision; the coming of Christ is near to those who bear fruit.
41. 54“This generation” is not only Christ's contemporaries but the generation of the Church, which will not pass until all is fulfilled in each believer; Christ's words never pass because they are always being fulfilled.
42. 55Origen offers explanations of why the Son is said not to know the day and hour: his human growth before his exaltation, the Father's not fixing the times in advance, and the Son's sharing the ignorance of his body the Church until all know together.
43. 56The end will come suddenly, in a time of peace, like the flood and the fire of Sodom; what matters is each one's own end, for which one must always watch; of the two in the field, the good is taken and the bad left, though the spirit returns to God.
44. 58The two in one bed are two bodies of the same matter, one taken and one left; body, soul, and mind correspond to the bed, the mill, and the field.
45. 59Watching for the Lord's coming means watching for both one's death and his coming into the soul; the thief is the devil breaking into the negligent soul, to be caught before sin is done, while the lamp of the Word guides those still advancing.
46. 60The watches of the night are the stages of life at which people begin to watch for the Lord; the faithful and wise servant is the bishop or steward who serves rather than lords it, feeds his fellow servants rightly, and administers church funds for the poor with honesty and discernment.
47. 62Faithful stewards will share Christ's rule over all his possessions, each over a part, while bad stewards who abuse fellow servants under pretext of church service will be “cut in two,” their spirit returning to God and soul and body punished.
48. 63The ten virgins are all who have received the word; the five senses, outward and divine, are all wise or all foolish together, and the oil is the word of teaching gathered from teachers, which the foolish neglected to store up.
49. 64The midnight cry is the angels rousing the senses; the wise could not spare their oil because they had enough teaching for their own lives but not to teach others, so the foolish must go to the teachers, and those who put off learning until death are shut out.
50. 65Christ, present everywhere as God the Word, is said to go abroad according to the body he took up, which is never separated from him; and he is absent from us while we walk by faith and present when we walk by sight; his money is his pure words.
51. 66The talents are the measures of understanding of Scripture given to Christ's servants, from the letter to its higher sense; one who can build up souls but hides his gift and will not teach is the servant who buried his talent, and the long delay explains why the apostles lived to old age.
52. 67The two faithful servants hear the same praise because each used all he had; faith in small things is reckoned as righteousness, as with Abraham, and God asks only that each use all he has received for his glory.
53. 68The servant with one talent stands for believers who hide their faith and think of God as harsh; the Lord reaps where the righteous sowed and counts gifts to the poor as given to himself, and he is severe only to those who abuse his mercy, so his words must be entrusted to hearers who will pass them on.
54. 69God can take the capacity from one who neglects it and give it to one who multiplies it, since every virtue is nothing without God's grace; the useless servant is cast into an outer darkness that may lie outside the world.
55. 70The judgement of the nations is not merely an exhortation to generosity: at Christ's second coming his divinity will be manifest to all everywhere, not in one place, his throne is the saints or angelic powers, the sheep are the gentle and the goats the wicked, and the “laying down” of the world is a mystery not to be written down.
56. 72The works of mercy stand for every virtue, bodily and spiritual: Christ is fed, clothed, received, and visited in his weak and imprisoned members; the Father blesses, but each person is the author of his own curse, and the eternal fire, invisible, was prepared not for men but for the devil and his angels.
57. 73As the soul feels the body's hunger, the impassible Saviour suffers in his members; the judge lists the good deeds of the righteous one by one but shortens the faults of the wicked, and his true brothers are the perfect who imitate him.
58. 74God set the hour of Christ's passion, so he could suffer nothing until he had finished the words he meant to speak; “all these words” means those already spoken, since more remained before he was handed over.
59. 75The day, month, and year of the passion were fixed: “the Passover takes place” means a new Passover replacing the old; the Father, Judas, Satan, and the priests all handed Christ over, but God from mercy and the others from avarice, envy, and fear.
60. 76The council of the chief priests fulfils Psalm 2; Origen applies the prophets' words on Sodom and Gomorrah to the plotters, links the court of Caiaphas to the desolation of Jerusalem, and likens false doctrines to false priests plotting against the Word, who will rise again.
61. 77Origen argues that the Gospels tell of three different women who anointed Jesus, not one, and reads their differences as degrees among the faithful: penitents anoint the Lord's feet with works that serve others, while the perfect pour precious ointment on his head with works done for God's glory alone.
62. 78The two apostles named Judas figure faithful and faithless confessors; Judas sold Christ for thirty staters, as those who sin for gain betray the Word, and sought a moment without the crowd, as betrayers do in persecution; the Passover is to be kept not bodily, as the Ebionites would, but spiritually, in the large upper room of a purified understanding.
63. 80Jesus did not name the traitor so that each heart might be tested; the faithful apostles were saddened because human nature can be turned to evil, and so everyone not yet perfect must fear his own fall and never boast, as Peter's denial shows.
64. 82Jesus pointed out the traitor through the prophecy of the one who ate his bread; Judas's betrayal after sharing salt, bread, and the Lord's supper shows great malice, as do those in the Church who plot against brothers with whom they share the body and blood of Christ.
65. 83As God the Word, Jesus remained with and guarded his disciples while he went to the cross; the devil handed him over through Judas, as the devil acts through all betrayers and unjust judges; Judas asked “Is it I?” last and without fear, only to hide his plan.
66. 85The bread and cup that God the Word calls his body and blood are the word that nourishes souls and the word that gladdens the heart; only the cup is called “of the new covenant” because salvation comes through faith in Christ's birth and passion.
67. 86Christ will eat and drink the renewed Passover with his disciples in the kingdom, not bodily but as true spiritual food; he always takes the bread and cup from the Father and gives them to the worthy, drinking with them, since he is in each, and his blood poured into the heart remits sins.
68. 87The disciples stumbled in the night because the Holy Spirit had not yet been given; those who have confessed Jesus in the Spirit have no excuse if they deny him, for they walk in the day; the scattered sheep were gathered by the risen Christ in Galilee.
69. 88By promising never to stumble after Jesus had foretold that all would, Peter in effect made the Truth a liar, and so was left to deny him three times; had he prayed for help instead, he might have been kept from it; the other disciples promised only after a prophecy that did not concern them.
70. 89Jesus left the place of the Passover and chose a pure place to pray before his betrayal; Origen discusses whether the place of prayer matters, defends the church's practice of excluding notorious sinners from common prayer, and warns against despising others in pride.
71. 90Jesus only “began” to be sorrowful, according to his human nature and not his impassible divinity, to teach the disciples, especially self-confident Peter, that the flesh is weak; he kept the three at a set distance, since each must remain in the rank of his calling.
72. 92Christ's prayer in Gethsemane belongs to his true human nature, which shrinks from suffering, and teaches submission to God's will; alternatively he grieved for the Jews and for Judas, who would perish through his passion, yet chose the salvation of all; the cup of salvation is martyrdom, and John omits the prayer because he writes of Christ's divinity.
73. 93The disciples slept when Jesus left them, so we must pray that he never leave us; to “enter into temptation” is to be overcome by it, for whoever comes to Jesus is not overtaken by evils; “the spirit is willing, the flesh weak” describes the saints, whose flesh has been weakened and put to death, and who must the more fear a fall.
74. 95The cup of the passion was bound to pass from Christ, but only by his drinking it would it also pass from the human race; so he chose to drink it, as Jeremiah's cup of wrath is drunk for cleansing; his threefold prayer teaches perseverance.
75. 96The sleep Jesus now commands differs from the disciples' earlier drowsiness: first we must watch and pray, then rest at God's command, as in Proverbs and David's vow; perhaps the soul too needs blameless rest to be renewed.
76. 97The hour of which Jesus spoke at Cana had come; and Jesus is still handed over to sinners whenever sinners who profess faith hold him, or whenever the righteous, in whom he dwells, fall into sinners' power.
77. 98Judas drew near not to Jesus, from whom his sins had already separated him, but only to hand over one he had already betrayed; so all transgressors first betray Jesus and then hand him over.
78. 99The great armed crowd came because his enemies thought Jesus could escape by magic, as he had once escaped at Nazareth, and so Judas told them to hold him carefully; today too false doctrines fight against Jesus with spiritual swords and clubs.
79. 100Judas needed a sign because, by tradition, Jesus appeared differently to each according to his worth, as the manna suited every taste; the kiss was either a remnant of reverence or meant to keep Jesus from escaping; heretics betray the Word with a kiss, and “friend” in Scripture is said only to the wicked.
80. 101Peter, not yet grasping the gospel's patience, struck with the sword; the cutting off of the servant's right ear figures the loss of the Jewish people's right hearing of the law, which they now hear only in its shadow, as Isaiah foretold.
81. 102Jesus told Peter to sheathe his sword because he wants his disciples peaceable, armed only with the sword of the Spirit; Christians must not use the sword for military service or private revenge; he could have had legions of angels, who need him more than he them, but chose to suffer as Scripture foretold.
82. 103Jesus reminds the crowd that a robber is taken with arms, but he had taught peaceably in the temple every day; he speaks only after sheathing Peter's sword and healing the servant's ear, so that his words are confirmed by his deeds.
83. 104Many prophecies, especially the psalm about Judas, were fulfilled in the arrest; the disciples fled because they did not yet have the Spirit of power and love.
84. 105Caiaphas figures the teaching of the Jewish service that opposes the truth of Jesus, the true priest; the scribes preside over the letter that kills, and the elders rest in its oldness.
85. 106Peter followed at a distance, waiting to see an outcome he did not yet understand, for the true end is the Word himself; the council could find no plausible false testimony, which proves the blamelessness of Jesus' life and teaching.
86. 108The two witnesses were false because they twisted Jesus' saying, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up,” which concerned his body, into a claim that he would destroy the temple himself; and, as Mark says, even their testimony did not agree.
87. 109Jesus' silence before Caiaphas fulfils the psalm of the one who kept silent before the sinner, and teaches us to ignore slanderers whose charges contradict themselves.
88. 110Adjuring is found in the law, but one who lives by the Gospel, which forbids swearing, should not adjure anyone, nor adjure demons, since Christ gave power to command them; Jesus neither denied nor openly confessed, but turned the doubting high priest's words, like the devil's “If you are the Son of God,” back on him.
89. 111Christ's “sitting at the right hand of power” means his royal establishment in all power, fulfilled from his resurrection on, and seen at last even by his enemies; the clouds on which he comes are the prophets and apostles who reign with him.
90. 112The high priest, unable to look up to the Son of Man, tore his garments, showing his soul's nakedness and figuring the tearing of the old priesthood; condemning the source of all life to death was the greatest error.
91. 113The spitting and blows fulfil Isaiah 50 and are a further humiliation for which God exalted Christ; Peter, who denied in the night before the Spirit was given, could be forgiven, but believers who deny after receiving the Spirit have no excuse; the maidservants figure the synagogue, the Gentiles, and heresies, and Peter wept only once outside the courtyard.
92. 115The disciples stumbled in the night and could be pardoned, but the chief priests took counsel in daylight, knowingly; they bound the one who looses all bonds, and, like Samson, he broke the bonds he willingly accepted.
93. 116Origen leaves open whether the names Pontius and Pilate carry a meaning bearing on the Saviour's dispensation.
94. 117Judas's repentance refutes those who teach fixed natures that perish, for it came from the seed of virtue in every soul; but he repented without knowledge, gave way to the devil's excessive grief, and took his own life instead of awaiting God's mercy; the potter's field buries those who remain strangers to God; the prophecy attributed to Jeremiah is found in Zechariah or in a secret writing, as Paul too cites secret books.
95. 118The judge of all creation humbled himself to stand before Pilate; the high priest asked in doubt, Pilate stated, and Pilate showed some reverence toward Jesus; Jesus' silence before his accusers continues toward those who still accuse him, and his calm before death amazed the governor.
96. 120The custom of releasing a prisoner was a favour of new Roman rule, with a precedent in Israel's rescue of Jonathan; Origen asks whether the Church's prayers can win release for a sinner who serves it, but urges us to be among those who ask; the Jews' feast that chose Barabbas is the one God hates, while we keep the feast by choosing Jesus.
97. 121Origen doubts the reading “Jesus Barabbas”, since no sinner in Scripture bears the name of Jesus, and suspects it was added by heretics; Barabbas stands for sedition and death, Jesus for peace, and in each person one or the other is released by his deeds.
98. 122God turned Pilate's wife through a dream, so that she suffered in a dream rather than in life; whether she was converted God knows, though non-public writings say so; she may figure the Church of the Gentiles, freed from Pilate's rule by faith.
99. 123The chief priests persuaded the crowd to choose Barabbas, and Origen says the Jewish people are still stirred up by their teachers against Jesus; the crowds walk the broad way to destruction.
100. 124Pilate tried to shame the crowd, which demanded not only the murderer's release but the righteous man's crucifixion; he washed his hands, but they took the blood of Christ upon themselves and their children, which Origen applies to all later generations; Pilate then handed Jesus over to be crucified.
101. 125The soldiers' mockery was the work of the invisible rulers of this age; the scarlet cloak recalls Rahab's cord and Tamar's son and signifies the world's blood taken on by Christ; the crown of thorns, consumed on his head, bore away our sins; the reed is the fragile sceptre of the evil one, exchanged for the rod of God's kingdom.
102. 126John says Jesus carried his own cross, the others that Simon of Cyrene carried it; Origen weighs how both may be true, interprets Simon as obedience, and reports the tradition that Adam was buried at Golgotha, the place of the Skull, so that the head of the human race might rise with Christ.
103. 128The garments divided at the cross figure the words of Scripture, which some hold without having Christ himself, some more fully (the seamless tunic) and some only in part; the section breaks off comparing Matthew and Mark on the drink offered to Jesus.
104. 129The guard set to prevent the theft of the body could not prevent the resurrection, attested by many witnesses; so now the word of Scripture, killed by false interpretation, always rises again in those who receive it.
105. 130The inscription proclaims Christ king in every script and was the only charge against him; as the high priest wore God's name on his forehead, Christ, the true priest and king, wears on the cross his title, and in his ascension has the Father himself as his crown.
106. 131Christ crucified among robbers fulfils Isaiah's prophecy, and his disciples too are counted among the lawless and persecuted, for the world punishes the outstanding in wickedness and in virtue alike.
107. 132Those who blaspheme Jesus are those who “pass by”, like heretics who have left the Church's way; they falsely made him the destroyer of the temple, whereas he rebuilds what others destroy; he did not come down from the cross to satisfy mockers, but showed himself Son of God to believers after descending to the dead and rising.
108. 133Both robbers first reviled Jesus, but one was converted, a figure of those who believe after many sins; the darkness at the crucifixion was not a solar eclipse, impossible at the Passover full moon, but a local darkness over Judea, probably from clouds, figuring the darkness that came upon the Jewish nation until all Israel is saved.
109. 135Christ's loud cry, “Why have you forsaken me?”, was not a lie nor a merely human complaint: he was forsaken in taking the form of a servant and enduring the cross, and his cry, uttered when darkness fell on Judea, expresses the forsaking of Israel for the salvation of the Gentiles and his grief at the sins of those for whom he suffered.
110. 136Had the bystanders understood that Jesus was calling on God, they would have learned from his prayer, greater than Jonah's, to pray even in extreme distress.
111. 137The vinegar offered to Jesus fulfils the psalm; Origen applies it to writers who fill a “sponge” with falsehoods against Christ, to heretics who put alien doctrines in his mouth, and to believers who live badly, and urges giving Christ the pure wine of truth.
112. 138Christ's last loud cry was “Into your hands I commend my spirit”; to commit one's spirit to God in death belongs only to the saints, whom God will raise as he raised Christ; the tearing of the outer veil reveals the mysteries hidden until Christ, while the inner veil will be removed when what is perfect has come.
113. 139The earthquake signifies all flesh shaken by the new covenant; the split rocks are the prophets, whose hidden mysteries are opened in Christ; the opened tombs are bodies of souls dead to God, raised to faith after Christ's resurrection; these wonders happen daily in the soul, and seeing them spiritually is greater than seeing them bodily.
114. 140The centurion's confession may have come from Jesus' dying so quickly, by prayer or by his own will, since he had not been struck to hasten death, as Pilate's surprise shows; morally, those who see the mysteries of the passion confess him Son of God; the women who watched from afar, especially Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Salome, are blessed for following and ministering.
115. 142Joseph of Arimathea, rich in praiseworthy riches and a councillor whose title recalls the number ten, the mystery of Christ's name, gladly asked for Jesus' body, showing the fruit of his discipleship.
116. 143The clean linen and the new rock-hewn tomb were made cleaner by Christ's body; spiritually, believers buried with Christ in baptism are his new tomb, from which they rise with him; the one great stone could not be moved by his enemies but was rolled away by the angel.
117. 144Love kept the two Marys at the tomb, while the mother of the sons of Zebedee, present at the cross, is not mentioned there; the two were greater in love.
118. 145The chief priests' request for a guard shows that they knew Jesus had spoken of his bodily resurrection and so condemns their own false testimony; the charge that he planned a theft is incredible; like Pharaoh, they hardened their hearts even against the guards' report and bribed the soldiers to lie, yet God bore with them so that salvation might come to the Gentiles.