Homilies on Ezekiel

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.10 · 1.11–2.5 · 3.1–3.8 · 4.1–4.8 · 5.1–5.4 · 6.1–6.11 · 7.1–8.3 · 9.1–9.5 · 10.1–10.4 · 11.1–11.5 · 12.1–12.5 · 13.1–13.4 · 14.1–14.3

1. 1.1Origen opens by arguing that God mingles mercy with punishment, as the righteous shared the exile to help the sinners and as Joseph’s story shows.
2. 1.2God’s anger is a remedial discipline, like a father’s or a physician’s, and those punished in this life may thereby be spared in the future.
3. 1.3The fiery figure of Ezek 1:27 shows that God’s fire is remedial, consuming only the works of sin, and the captivity is a figure of the soul’s fall into sin through free choice.
4. 1.4Ezekiel, called “son of man” and seeing the heavens opened at thirty, is a type of Christ, whose true birth Origen defends against those who call it a phantom.
5. 1.5Ezekiel “in the midst of the captivity” figures Christ, who came among captives and lamented in his human soul; the river Chebar is the heavy river of this world.
6. 1.6The heavens, closed until Christ, were opened at his baptism so that the Spirit might descend first on him and then come to us.
7. 1.7Many heavens were opened so that the angels, following Christ’s descent, might come down to serve the salvation of believers.
8. 1.8God sent Ezekiel to the captives only five years into the exile, showing that he did not leave them long without admonition.
9. 1.9The word of God that came to Ezekiel makes believers “gods” (Ps 82:6), and only sin makes them die like men.
10. 1.10Allegorically, the word came to the man born of the virgin, joined to the divine Word; the land of the Chaldeans signifies the error of astrology and fate.
11. 1.11The many elements of the vision are deep mysteries; truths about God must be spoken with care, and the Church, like a net or a threshing floor, holds good and bad until Christ’s judgment.
12. 1.12The “spirit taking away” removes evils from the soul, as the prophetic word roots up false teaching before it builds and plants.
13. 1.13God removes evils by spirit or, failing that, by fire, which smelts away the base metals of vice, and each grievous element of the vision is paired with a pleasant one.
14. 1.14The north, from which the spirit comes, figures the devil, the source of vices, as Jeremiah and the camp of Dan in Numbers suggest.
15. 1.15The cherubim are those full of knowledge whom God rules, and the four faces stand for all creation subject to Christ: heavenly, earthly, infernal, and what is above the heavens.
16. 1.16The four faces may signify the soul’s three parts (reason, anger, desire) with the spirit above them, and the wheel within a wheel the providence that turns all things.
17. 2.1Scripture addresses every kind of sinner; its words on false prophets apply to teachers in the Church whose word or life does not match what they preach.
18. 2.2False prophets today are teachers, heretics or even churchmen, who read their own ideas into Scripture; Origen asks his hearers to judge his own preaching like expert money-changers.
19. 2.3Every teacher will be judged for his words and deeds, weighed on God’s scale; false prophets follow their own heart and spirit and so cannot see the truth.
20. 2.4False teachers are like foxes in deserted places, finding room only where Christ is absent, and unable to stand firm on the rock.
21. 2.5False teachers gather schismatic flocks and claim apostolic tradition, but have not risen with Christ; they will be excluded from God’s people and the land of promise.
22. 3.1The face the prophet must “set firm” is the ruling part of the heart, which must be fixed on Christ and the Scriptures rather than on worldly cares.
23. 3.2Taken literally, sewing pillows and veils is no sin, so Scripture itself compels a search for the spiritual meaning.
24. 3.3The pillows and veils are figures of teachers who flatter their hearers with pleasant, pleasure-loving preaching that lulls rather than heals.
25. 3.4God threatens to tear apart the pillows, that is, the soft teachings of heretics such as the Valentinians and Basilideans, who even permit denial under persecution.
26. 3.5God will tear away the veils of flattering teaching and free his people through a strict life, for no one can love both pleasure and God.
27. 3.6The false prophetesses strengthened the wicked so that none would turn from evil; God will silence their divinations and free his people.
28. 3.7The elders of Israel who came to Ezekiel figure presbyters absorbed in worldly cares, who prepare their own punishment.
29. 3.8God answers each sinner according to his disease, like a physician; one who persists is cut off from his people, and return after the final exclusion is very hard.
30. 4.1Ezekiel’s “sinful land” leads Origen to suggest tentatively that the earth itself is a living being, capable of good and evil and subject to judgment, and also that the land is the soul.
31. 4.2Origen confesses that the causes of famine are hidden, perhaps lying with the angels who have charge of the earth, and are known to God’s wisdom.
32. 4.3Taking man and beast from the land punishes the earth as a mother is punished by losing her children.
33. 4.4Noah, Daniel, and Job can be present together because whoever imitates them becomes them, as a tribe bears the name and character of its ancestor.
34. 4.5Daniel, a eunuch, had sons only in a spiritual sense; so too believers become sons of the saints, of Christ, and of the Father by imitating their virtues.
35. 4.6The many who imitate Noah, Daniel, and Job are one in their likeness, as many believers are one body and the lost sheep is one.
36. 4.7The evil beasts sent on the sinful land are, spiritually, the devil and invisible powers that devour sinners’ souls, worse than the beasts that killed the martyrs.
37. 4.8No one is saved by the righteousness of parents or saints; Noah, Daniel, and Job are named, following a Jewish interpreter, because each saw times of joy, sorrow, and joy restored.
38. 5.1The sword, like the fiery sword of paradise, both burns and cuts, as a surgeon treats cancer; God’s punishments are rational remedies, not mere torture.
39. 5.2Death, the last of the four punishments, like the others falls on God’s enemies; his friends, like Noah, Daniel, and Job, pass through unharmed.
40. 5.3Jerusalem, which receives all four punishments at once, stands for believers, whose sin after knowing Christ deserves a heavier penalty than any other.
41. 5.4Sinners in the Church are punished according to their rank, clergy most of all; and like a vine branch, a believer who bears no fruit is worse than any other wood and is cut off for the fire.
42. 6.1Ezekiel’s fearless denunciation of Jerusalem shows that the prophets spoke freely, not in a frenzy, choosing to obey God whatever the danger.
43. 6.2God left it to the prophets’ free will whether to speak, as Jonah’s refusal shows; they faced persecution if they spoke and God’s displeasure if they lied.
44. 6.3Jerusalem’s Canaanite parentage shows that sin changes one’s father: the sinner becomes a child of the devil, as the righteous are children of God and of Abraham.
45. 6.4Jerusalem’s uncut navel signifies a soul not cut off from sin, the navel being where the devil’s power lies against women; the Septuagint’s “unbound breasts” signify a loose and unstable mind.
46. 6.5Not all who are baptized are washed for salvation, as Simon Magus shows; catechumens must prepare so that their baptism brings salvation.
47. 6.6The reborn soul must be salted with grace and swaddled like the infant Christ; and Christ, and even the Father, suffer the passion of love in pity for humankind.
48. 6.7Those who sin after baptism are like Jerusalem cast out on the field on the day of her birth, yet God in mercy comes to them again.
49. 6.8God raised Jerusalem from her blood and adorned her youth; her “breasts” and “time” require allegory, and the “time of those who turn aside” is the age when angels of God or of Satan come to the soul.
50. 6.9God washes the soul’s blood away, anoints it, and clothes it in the many-colored tunic of knowledge and virtue, with the shoes of the gospel of peace.
51. 6.10Jerusalem’s fine clothes, jewels, and food are the soul’s virtues, understanding, and the sweet words of Scripture, but even after all these she fell, a warning against presumption.
52. 6.11Jerusalem’s harlotry with every passer-by is the soul’s yielding to each vice, and her stitched idols are heretical teachings patched together from scraps of Scripture.
53. 7.1The list of Jerusalem’s sins instructs us, like slaves watching a master’s discipline, not to repeat them, lest we too be shut out of God’s promises.
54. 7.2The temple vessels melted into male images signify the words of Scripture twisted into false meanings.
55. 7.3Heretics of good life are the more dangerous, dressing false teaching in virtue; hearers should judge teachers by their doctrine, not their lives, and imitate Christ alone.
56. 7.4The oil, incense, and bread set before idols are prayer, baptismal teaching, and the Scriptures, misused by heretics such as Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides.
57. 7.5Jerusalem sacrificing her children figures heretics who lead astray those born in the Church, a crime beyond all their other sins.
58. 7.6The soul, made in God’s image and very beautiful, is courted by corrupt lovers; Jerusalem’s brothel is the soul that gives itself to them.
59. 7.7The soul’s natural gifts make it beautiful, but heretical teaching corrupts it; and spiritual, like bodily, immorality varies in degree.
60. 7.8The Egyptians and Assyrians with whom Jerusalem played the harlot are hostile spiritual powers and fleshly understandings that take the soul captive.
61. 7.9The insatiable harlot is the sinner who keeps adding sins without repenting, making pacts with the powers of wickedness.
62. 7.10Moral teaching is milk for beginners and the mysteries of Scripture are solid food; Jerusalem’s “threefold” immorality is sin in flesh, soul, and spirit.
63. 8.1As teachers establish their hearers in good or evil, God would have established Jerusalem in good, but she, like a shameless harlot, sinned openly and refused correction.
64. 8.2The brothel at the head of every way is heresy that builds on the opening words of Moses and the prophets to snare beginners; the base in every street is pagan, loose living.
65. 8.3The harlot who pays her lovers is the soul that, after years of virtue, hands over to the hostile powers the goods given it by its husband, the Word of God.
66. 9.1Sin multiplies and divides while virtue unites; Jerusalem’s sisters, Samaria and Sodom, stand for heresy and paganism, which become the sinful believer’s kin.
67. 9.2Sodom’s chief sin was pride, the devil’s own sin and the greatest of all, a danger also for clergy; and to be “justified” only by comparison with worse sinners is no praise.
68. 9.3Righteousness and sin are measured by comparison: the lesser sinner is “justified” by the greater, while even the greatest saints are darkness beside Christ, the Sun of righteousness.
69. 9.4Sodom’s pride grew from plenty, like that of the rich man who ignored Lazarus; such arrogance makes anyone a “Sodomite” in the sense of Ezek 16:49.
70. 9.5Neglect of the poor and boasting are Sodom’s sins, found within us; both wealth and spiritual gifts breed pride, as Paul’s thorn and David’s fall after boasting of his purity show.
71. 10.1After sin, the second remedy is shame and the humble acceptance of disgrace, as with a deposed cleric who submits instead of causing schism; God restores those who accept his judgment.
72. 10.2God will restore Sodom (the Gentiles) first, Samaria (the heretics) second, and sinful Jerusalem (unfaithful believers) last; punishment is measured to sin, and anger is not in God but is provoked by sinners.
73. 10.3Sodom and Samaria, figures of the sinful and heretical soul, are restored only after ages of punishment; how much longer, then, for the sinner who was Jerusalem?
74. 10.4Restoration comes only after sins are drained by long punishment, as a quick injury needs a long cure; even when forgiven, the sinner remains ashamed, so believers must stand firm in persecution.
75. 11.1As exercise strengthens the body, the study of Scripture’s riddles trains the soul for eternal life; Ezekiel’s parable of the eagles is such a riddle.
76. 11.2Origen retells the parable of the two eagles and the vine and explains its literal sense: Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem’s king and people to Babylon, and their turning to Pharaoh brought worse ruin.
77. 11.3The eagle, though unclean in the law, is used in Scripture in both bad and good senses; the cherubim and the peace of Isa 11 show unclean creatures cleansed in Christ.
78. 11.4Nebuchadnezzar could take Jerusalem’s leaders only because they sinned; the transplanted vine grew weak, so believers should stay within the Church and accept God’s chastisement rather than flee to “Pharaoh.”
79. 11.5Allegorically, the great eagle is the devil, who carries off leaders and ordinary believers from the Church through sin; only by remaining in the Church can the vine bear fruit.
80. 12.1God’s words are sweet, but the believer who sins turns them bitter, like wormwood in honey, and so dishonors God himself and deserves a heavier punishment than unbelievers.
81. 12.2The true Nebuchadnezzar, the devil, seeks first to capture the Church’s leaders; sin gives him entry, and his captives are led into the “Babylon” of a confused soul.
82. 12.3The sinner falls under the devil’s covenant of curse; but punishment accepted patiently, like the handing over to Satan in 1 Cor 5:5, saves the spirit, while seeking escape through “Egypt” brings ruin.
83. 12.4Whoever accepts God’s chastisement with thanksgiving honors his “curse” and will receive his blessing; whoever flees it dies in Babylon without help.
84. 12.5The cedar shoot planted on the high mountain is the apostles planted in Christ, growing into the Church; the high and green tree brought low is the Jewish people, the dry tree made green the Gentiles.
85. 13.1The prince of Tyre lamented by Ezekiel is not a man but one of the angelic princes set over the nations, like the princes in Daniel; these powers, not human persecutors, are the Church’s real enemies.
86. 13.2God laments even the fallen prince of Tyre; believers are called to rise to the place from which such powers fell, receiving Christ’s seal and the soul’s true beauty, and must beware of falling through pride.
87. 13.3The twelve precious stones of the prince of Tyre correspond to the stones of the heavenly Jerusalem and to the virtues, like the twelve virgins of the Shepherd of Hermas, built on the foundation of Christ.
88. 13.4Sidon’s “hunters” are those who lure hearers from the Church; Pharaoh’s rivers are heretical teachings, while Christ is the river that gladdens the city of God.
89. 14.1The shut eastern gate of Ezekiel’s temple, through which only the Lord and the prince pass, cannot be taken literally of a material gate.
90. 14.2The shut gate signifies the hidden meanings of Scripture, opened only by Christ, who holds the key of knowledge; some mysteries are known to Christ alone, the prince who eats the bread within.
91. 14.3As certain priestly foods were eaten only in the holy place, Christ alone eats the bread of the Father’s nature, though he also invites believers to dine with him and gives them daily bread.