Homilies on Numbers

Contents

Reading pages: 0.1–2.2 · 3.1–4.3 · 5.1–6.4 · 7.1–7.6 · 8.1–9.5 · 9.6–10.3 · 11.1–11.5 · 11.6–12.2 · 12.3–12.4 · 13.1–13.8 · 14.1–14.4 · 15.1–16.3 · 16.4–16.8 · 16.9–17.5 · 17.6–18.4 · 19.1–20.1 · 20.2–20.5 · 21.1–22.4 · 23.1–23.11 · 24.1–24.3 · 25.1–25.6 · 26.1–26.7 · 27.1–27.8 · 27.9–27.12 · 28.1–28.4

1. 0.1Rufinus's preface to Ursacius explains that he translated Origen's material on Numbers in wartime, under threat from the barbarians across the strait from Sicily.
2. 1.1Origen explains that only those who have grown to spiritual maturity and strength are counted in God's number, as only grown Israelite men were counted in Numbers.
3. 1.2Only the strength of Israel, taught by God through Scripture, counts before God, and Israel was counted only after it had been tested, fought, and received the law.
4. 1.3The ordered tribes and camps of Numbers prefigure the ranks of the resurrection, and the land distributed by Joshua points to the inheritance Jesus Christ gives.
5. 2.1The command that each Israelite march in his own order teaches that clergy, ascetics, and all Christians must live in a way that fits the order they profess.
6. 2.2As each person has his own face and handwriting, each soul has its own signs, and believers can advance from lower to brighter signs toward the glory of the resurrection.
7. 3.1Like the manna, the word of God nourishes some and condemns others, and neither baptism nor the catechumenate guarantees possession of the Holy Spirit.
8. 3.2The Levites, though not firstborn, are taken in place of the firstborn, showing that God ranks people by the purpose of their heart, and Christ alone stands perfectly “in the midst.”
9. 3.3The Levites camped around the tabernacle point to the heavenly orders of Hebrews 12, and Origen urges his hearers to climb as high among them as they can.
10. 3.4The striking of Egypt's firstborn before Israel's were sanctified signifies Christ's triumph over the demonic powers, which makes believers God's firstborn.
11. 4.1The 22,000 Levites and the 273 extra firstborn are read as numbers of creation and of human gestation, and the four divisions of Levite duties are described.
12. 4.2The Kohathites, counted from twenty-five to fifty, carry the holy objects only after the priests have covered all seven of them.
13. 4.3Priests of the church must guard the deeper mysteries and hand them on to the less skilled only veiled, as the Kohathites carried the holy objects covered.
14. 5.1As the priests covered the holy things before the Kohathites carried them, the church's teachers hand on mysteries whose meaning most believers practice without understanding, such as kneeling, praying toward the east, the Eucharist, and the rites of baptism.
15. 5.2The Levites' “works of works” are works with a hidden meaning, and their ages, twenty-five and fifty, signify perfected senses and the remission figured by the jubilee.
16. 5.3The furnishings of the tabernacle stand for different kinds of saints, whom angels carry toward the promised rest, as Psalm 91 says of the righteous.
17. 6.1Moses going out to speak to the people is a pattern for teachers, who speak deeper mysteries among the mature and plain moral teaching to the crowds, as Paul did.
18. 6.2God's sharing of Moses' spirit with the seventy elders is like lighting many lamps from one, which loses nothing of its light.
19. 6.3The Spirit rested on the seventy elders and the prophets only for a time and left them in sin, but he remained permanently on Christ alone, who committed no sin.
20. 6.4Origen reads Moses' Ethiopian wife as the church of the Gentiles and Miriam's leprosy as the present state of the synagogue, which will be healed when all Israel is saved.
21. 7.1Miriam's leprosy warns against slander, and those who disparage Moses, whether Jews, heretics who reject the law, or carnal readers of Scripture, are lepers in the soul.
22. 7.2God's praise of Moses as one to whom he speaks face to face points to the law understood spiritually in the church, and preachers who fail to expound the law spiritually give occasion for despising it.
23. 7.3Miriam made like an abortion signifies the synagogue that never came to full birth, while Ecclesiastes shows that one who dies to the world, or is “untimely born” like Paul, can be better than those who live in vanity.
24. 7.4Moses' prayer for Miriam figures his intercession for Israel, whose present repudiation, like Miriam's seven days outside the camp, lasts until the end of the world's week.
25. 7.5The spies' report of giants in the promised land is read as the Christian's struggle against the spiritual powers who hold the heavenly inheritance, which believers win by faith in Jesus.
26. 7.6Armed with Paul's spiritual armor and following Jesus, believers can overcome the demonic “giants,” who grow weaker as Christians grow in holiness.
27. 8.1God's threat after the spies' report shows Moses' intercession and foretells a new people, and the “year for a day” of punishment is explained as the long healing of repeated wounds of the soul, which repentance shortens.
28. 9.1The censers of Korah's rebels, hammered into plates for the altar, teach that scriptural truths found in heretics' words are not to be discarded, and that heresy, set beside the church's faith, makes the truth shine more clearly.
29. 9.2God's glory appeared to Moses and Aaron only when the people rose against them, showing that persecution brings Christians God's grace and glory.
30. 9.3Moses and Aaron, standing for the law and for intercession, saved all Israel; when the law moves us to repentance and prayer, God's anger is turned away.
31. 9.4Against heretics who say the God of the law is just but not good, Origen points to Moses and Aaron praying for their enemies, and teaches that the law understood spiritually is always a new testament.
32. 9.5Aaron standing with his censer between the living and the dead prefigures Christ, who stood between them in his incarnation and death and will again at the judgment.
33. 9.6Sinners are clay vessels for dishonor that can be broken, but whoever cleanses himself becomes a vessel for honor; the clay vessel also figures the body and the plain letter of the law, which hold the treasure of God's grace and wisdom.
34. 9.7Aaron's rod bearing nuts figures Christ's cross and the threefold sense of Scripture (the bitter letter, the protective moral teaching, and the nourishing hidden mystery), and God, who promised only that the rod would sprout, gave more than he promised.
35. 9.8The rod's sprout, leaves, blossoms, and nuts figure the fourfold glory of the resurrection body and show that God's promised goods surpass all that can be seen or imagined.
36. 9.9The rod's four stages figure the believer's growth from first confession to bearing fruit for others, and Christ, the rod from Jesse's root, comes as discipline to the sluggish and as a flower to the righteous.
37. 10.1The priests “bear the sins of the holy ones” because those called holy still sin, as Paul's letters to the Corinthians show, and only those who pursue holiness seek healing for their sins through the high priest.
38. 10.2Christ takes away sin, and his “sons,” the apostles and martyrs, share in bearing the sins of the holy by offering themselves; Origen fears that in a time without martyrs the church lacks this help.
39. 10.3Priests must keep both the outward commands and the hidden mysteries within the veil, and in each person the inner sanctuary is the heart, where prayer, the knowledge of the Trinity, and God's law written on the mind are to be guarded.
40. 11.1Distinguishing “law” from commandments, ordinances, testimonies, and judgments, Origen argues that some precepts are only shadows, some (like the Ten Commandments) are kept literally, and some (like the joining of husband and wife) are kept literally and also bear an allegorical sense.
41. 11.2The firstfruits law still binds Christians literally: they should give firstfruits to the clergy, since Christ requires righteousness exceeding that of the Pharisees, who tithed even herbs.
42. 11.3Spiritually, the firstfruits are outstanding believers, like Cornelius, whom angels, apostles, and teachers offer to Christ the high priest from the field of human hearts.
43. 11.4Each angel will bring the souls in its care to the judgment and offer the best as firstfruits; nations and churches have their angels, and Christ himself is the firstfruits of firstfruits offered to God.
44. 11.5As God once divided the nations among the angels and kept Israel as his own portion, so at the resurrection he will divide humanity again, and believers should strive to be the Lord's portion rather than the portion of demons.
45. 11.6Firstfruits under the law were eaten and consumed, but Christ, the true firstfruits, is kept in the soul and grows the more he is received.
46. 11.7God accepts firstfruits only from those sanctified by faith, not the self-credited virtues of pagans, and the “eternal ordinance” points to invisible, spiritual realities given to Christ and his apostles.
47. 11.8Only the Trinity is holy by nature; creatures are “sanctified holy,” and the firstfruits we offer are the highest forms of the Spirit's fruits, such as loving God with the whole heart and rejoicing in God's word.
48. 11.9The firstfruits of almsgiving are a merciful heart, and the firstfruits of the sacrifice of praise are prayer offered with a collected, attentive mind, which the angels present to Christ.
49. 12.1The command to gather the people at the well points to a spiritual meaning: the Scriptures speak of many wells and springs, culminating in the living water Christ gives to believers.
50. 12.2The many wells and one spring of Proverbs signify the three persons and one substance of the Trinity; the soul's wells must be dug clear of earth, and the law gathers us to the well that is Christ.
51. 12.3The princes and kings who dug the well are the prophets and apostles who uncovered Christ beneath the letter, and Israel's stages from the well signify the soul's journey through gifts, God's grace, and dying with Christ to the heights of blessedness.
52. 12.4Israel's request to pass through Sihon's land figures the baptismal renunciation of the devil, and victory over him comes by keeping Christ's commandments.
53. 13.1Sihon, the devil, falls by the sword of God's word, and the land from “curses” to “wrestling” is won by those who struggle free of his kingdom, while his chief city Heshbon, “thoughts,” must be burned by Christ's fire.
54. 13.2The “riddle-speakers” of Numbers are the law, the prophets, and the church's spiritual interpreters, who tear down pagan error in a person's thoughts and rebuild them with truth and piety.
55. 13.3Israel made no peace overtures to Og of Bashan, “shamefulness,” but destroyed him, teaching that every trace of shameful conduct must be cut away from the soul.
56. 13.4Balak turned to the sorcerer Balaam rather than to arms because words can do what force cannot, and because he had heard that Israel conquered by prayer; magic can harm but, unlike God's power, cannot restore.
57. 13.5Balak sought Balaam's curses to counter Israel's prayers; magic works through evil demons, which no holy angel obeys, and those who can call on Christ must never call on demons.
58. 13.6Balak's claim that Balaam's blessings take effect was flattery, since magic can only curse; when Balaam consulted his divining instruments, God drove away the demons and came himself to forbid the curse.
59. 13.7God kept Balaam's demons away rather than destroying them, because he will not condemn the demons or remove their free will before the time; Balaam's star prophecy, preserved by his disciples, led the magi to Christ.
60. 13.8Balaam's ass, which saw the angel he could not see, is read as humanity once ridden by demons and now, as the church, carrying Christ into the heavenly Jerusalem.
61. 14.1Origen returns to the puzzles of the Balaam story, God's changing instructions and the angel's opposition, and notes that the divine name in this passage is not the tetragrammaton.
62. 14.2God did not make evil but uses it, as with Joseph's brothers, Balak, Judas, and the devil, to test and crown the virtuous, while each person by free choice becomes a vessel of honor or of dishonor.
63. 14.3God turned Balaam, a greedy sorcerer, into a means of making Christ's mysteries known to the nations, putting his word in Balaam's mouth though not in his heart.
64. 14.4Allegorically, Balaam stands for the scribes and Pharisees, and his ass for simple believers whom Christ's disciples set free; even a false teacher may prophesy, so love outranks prophecy.
65. 15.1At his hearers' request Origen turns to Balaam's prophecy and asks why Scripture both blames and praises him; he then notes how rarely Scripture says the Spirit “came upon” a prophet, and reads Balaam's coming from Mesopotamia and the eastern mountains as coming from the rivers of Babylon and the false light of the devil.
66. 15.2Balak asks Balaam to curse Jacob and to “over-curse” Israel, because those who advance toward the vision of God face fiercer attacks; Balaam had God's word in his mouth but greed in his heart.
67. 15.3God's curses are just sentences, unlike human cursing, which Paul forbids; God does not curse the true Israel, who live on the heights, dwell apart from the nations, and are known and numbered by God alone.
68. 15.4Balaam's wish to die among the righteous will be fulfilled in the Jewish people when they come to faith in Christ at the end of the age, and his “seed” may be the magi; neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts, but faith working through love.
69. 16.1Balak, dismayed by Balaam’s blessings, takes him to another place, and God meets Balaam there in spite of the pagan sacrifices so that the Gentiles might believe through their own seer.
70. 16.2Origen sets out the second oracle of Balaam and explains why Balak, said to be “standing” at his idolatrous sacrifice, is told to “rise.”
71. 16.3God is not deceived like a man, because he speaks without passion; and if he terrifies, it is not out of boasting but to correct sinners before punishment comes.
72. 16.4Discussing whether God always does what he says, Origen examines Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh and Gad’s message to David, distinguishes God’s words from a prophet’s (as with Moses’ permission of divorce), and finally prefers Jeremiah’s teaching that God relents.
73. 16.5The promise of no toil or grief in Jacob refers to the life to come, granted to the true Israel according to the spirit, like Lazarus, not to the rich man.
74. 16.6The spiritual Israel will receive the glories forfeited by fallen powers, and its glory will be like that of the unicorn, a figure of Christ whose one horn is his single kingdom over all.
75. 16.7Origen explains augury and divination as the work of demons, illustrated by the Philistines’ test of the ark and Manasseh’s sins, recalls the law’s prohibitions, and says the people of God must learn the future only from God through his prophets.
76. 16.8The people that will rise like a lion’s whelp and exult like a lion is the future Christian people, growing from spiritual infancy to the perfection of Christ, the lion of Judah.
77. 16.9Because drinking blood cannot be meant literally, Origen reads it of drinking Christ’s blood in the sacraments and in his words and those of his wounded apostles.
78. 17.1Balak takes Balaam to Phogor (“delight”); Origen explains why the law allowed sacrifices to God (a concession like divorce, and perhaps a remedy against sacrifices to demons) until Christ, the one perfect victim.
79. 17.2Balaam’s seeing that it was good to bless Israel foreshadows Israel’s future recognition of the spiritual Israel when the veil is removed and it no longer seeks auspices from animals.
80. 17.3The praise of Balaam as “the man who truly sees” fits the people whose veil is removed; Origen distinguishes the better eyes from the eyes of the flesh opened by the serpent’s counsel, which Christ closes.
81. 17.4The good houses of Jacob and tents of Israel signify the completion of good works and the endless advance in wisdom, the law and the prophets read spiritually, or body and soul; the faithful must build their own tents after the heavenly pattern, as Paul did.
82. 17.5The man who comes forth from Israel’s seed is Christ; “Gog,” read as an untranslated Hebrew word meaning “upon the roofs,” signifies his kingdom exalted in the perfect and growing in the churches.
83. 17.6The rest of the third oracle is read of Christ: called out of Egypt, ruling as the unicorn, consuming the nations by converting them, resting like a lion on the cross; those who curse him, including Christians whose conduct brings his name into blasphemy, are cursed.
84. 18.1Balak dismisses Balaam, who protests that he cannot transgress God’s word for any reward; Origen then asks what Balaam means by “I give you counsel.”
85. 18.2Origen reads “I give you counsel” as “I make known to you God’s counsel,” comparing Paul’s “who has been his counsellor?”, which he applies to the Son and the Holy Spirit as sharers in the Father’s counsel.
86. 18.3Balaam’s claim to “know the knowledge of the Most High” means that all skill and knowledge, from craftsmanship to medicine and divination, originates in God, though men and demons can turn it to evil, as Balaam did.
87. 18.4The star out of Jacob is the star of the Magi, which remained on Christ as a sign of his divinity, while the man out of Israel signifies his humanity; Christ destroys the demonic princes, takes humanity as his plunder, makes even the flesh an heir, and saves those whom he “destroys” by setting them free from the world.
88. 19.1Origen gathers the scriptural accounts of Amalek, whose name means “licking up” or “turning aside the people,” and reads him as the invisible opposing power that must be conquered, through holiness, prayer, and pressing forward, before one reaches the kingdom.
89. 19.2Amalek, “the beginning of the nations,” is the invisible power that first turned men to idolatry; it is his seed, false teaching, that will perish, not the people, which answers those who call the God of the law cruel.
90. 19.3The Kenite, safe if he nests in the rock that is Christ, signifies the church member who must beware the cunning of heretics, lest he be handed over to the “Assyrians” for correction, as Paul handed blasphemers over to Satan.
91. 19.4The last oracle foretells the blessedness of those who see Christ’s victory, the struggle of the people who “cross over” with the demonic “Assyrians,” and the final perishing of Assur, whom Origen doubts can ever be recovered like the lost sheep.
92. 20.1Origen recounts how Balaam counselled Balak to defeat Israel by seducing it into sexual immorality and idolatry, urges Christians to arm themselves with the virtues against such darts, and explains “the teaching of Balaam” in Revelation as doing what Balaam did.
93. 20.2Worse than bodily immorality is the “general” immorality of the soul that abandons its marriage to the Word for the embraces of demons; the soul always bears children, virtues or sins, and sinful desires must be dashed against the rock of Christ while still small.
94. 20.3Shittim (“refutation”) marks Israel’s fall into immorality and idolatry; Origen applies “things sacrificed to idols” to pagan doctrines, Solomon’s many wives to many philosophies, and Baal-peor to every sin as consecration to a demon, but insists that the guardian angels and the Father, Son, and Spirit care more for our salvation than the demons for our ruin.
95. 20.4The exposure of the princes for the people’s sin shows that leaders and teachers must answer for those in their care, and, at a deeper level, that the guardian angels too will be examined at the judgment for the sins of those entrusted to them.
96. 20.5Phinehas’s spear becomes the sword of the Spirit with which the Christian must at once strike down sinful thoughts at their source, and so calm God’s anger before the day of judgment.
97. 21.1The second census, made for the generation that would inherit, signifies the Gentile people who receive the inheritance from Jesus, not Moses; the Levites, whose inheritance is the Lord, signify those devoted wholly to God’s wisdom, while others receive the higher “land of the living.”
98. 21.2In the heavenly inheritance the “few” are the more blessed, as the narrowing ark shows; the priests receive God alone as their inheritance; alternatively, one righteous man counts as many and the wicked, however numerous, as few.
99. 21.3Since some received their inheritance outside the lot, Origen infers that in the kingdom of heaven Christ will give outstanding saints a special share beyond the common lot, as he promised his disciples.
100. 22.1God’s answer to the daughters of Zelophehad gave lasting laws of inheritance; spiritually, the five daughters are good works done through the five senses, by which even simple believers without deep understanding (“shadow in his mouth”) inherit with the people of God.
101. 22.2The five degrees of succession are read spiritually as five ways of attaining the heavenly inheritance: through knowledge, through works, through imitation of others, through the tradition of the ancients, and through any good done at all.
102. 22.3Moses, told to view the promised land from the mountain before dying, is a figure of perfection; yet his death for his transgression at Zin shows that even he was under sin, and that Christ alone, who did no sin, sets us free.
103. 22.4Moses, not daring to choose his own successor, teaches church leaders never to hand on office by kinship or popular favour but to leave the choice to God; spiritually, Moses’ death is the end of the letter of the law, and Jesus leads the second people into the inheritance and gives the soul rest from inner warfare.
104. 23.1Origen introduces the laws of sacrifices and feasts by explaining that Christ has transferred worship from the visible rites of the law to the invisible and spiritual, which require spiritual ears and eyes.
105. 23.2The offerings God commands are his own gifts returned to him; God’s true feast days are the conversions of sinners, in which the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the angels rejoice, while sin brings mourning, though such language about God is figurative, since the divine nature is impassible.
106. 23.3The first of God’s festivals is the perpetual morning and evening sacrifice, fulfilled by constant prayer and avoidance of sin; Origen adds, from 1 Cor 7:5, that married intercourse interrupts it, so that only the perpetually continent offer it fully.
107. 23.4The Christian keeps the Sabbath by ceasing from worldly works and giving himself to spiritual ones, carrying no burden of sin and remaining in Christ; the true Sabbath, when God rests from his works, is the age to come.
108. 23.5The new moon, hidden when joined to the sun, figures the church or soul joined wholly to Christ, the sun of righteousness, renewed and hidden from human sight.
109. 23.6The true Passover lamb is Christ, and Christians eat the flesh of the Word of God in solid, mystical teaching about the Trinity and the age to come.
110. 23.7Unleavened Bread is kept by removing every leaven of malice from the soul, since God cannot care about literal leaven but abhors sin, and even a small sin grows.
111. 23.8The feast of New Fruits is kept by sowing in the Spirit and reaping the fruit of the Spirit, beginning with joy.
112. 23.9The feast of trumpets in the seventh month is kept by those who commit the prophetic and gospel Scriptures, the heavenly trumpets, to memory and meditate on them.
113. 23.10The Day of Atonement shows that God’s feasts consist in afflicting and humbling the soul, as the bread of affliction and bitter herbs of Passover also teach, so that Christ the propitiation may come to it.
114. 23.11God keeps the feast of Tabernacles over the soul that lives as a stranger on earth, hastening to its true homeland; in this life all festivals are kept only “in part,” and the perfect festival awaits the world to come, with Christ as its bridegroom.
115. 24.1The various festival victims figure the saints, apostles, and angels whose intercession contributes to the purification of the human race, as Christ the Lamb takes away the sin of the whole world; the decreasing number of bulls at Tabernacles shows sins diminishing through purification, until the one perfect victim ends the others.
116. 24.2The doubled “a man, a man” in the law of vows signifies the renewed inner man together with the outer; God first asks of us our fear, love, righteousness, and chastity, and the highest vow, the Nazirite’s, is to offer oneself to God in imitation of Christ, who gave himself.
117. 24.3The laws on women’s vows under father or husband are read of souls under the care of guardian angels, who share responsibility for rash vows they fail to restrain; the perfect, “a perfect man,” are free in their vows, and God himself guides them.
118. 25.1The heavier vengeance on the Midianites shows that causing another to stumble is graver than sinning oneself; and God’s word that Moses will be “added to his people” proves, against the Samaritans, that there is life after death.
119. 25.2Twelve thousand repentant Israelites defeat the Midianites who had earlier overcome a far larger sinful Israel, showing that righteousness, prayer, and repentance conquer; the death of Balaam confirms that his counsel caused Israel’s fall.
120. 25.3The five Midianite kings, whose names mean beastliness, emptiness, provocation, and the like, are vices reigning through the five senses, which the soldier of God must slay, as Christ commanded cutting off the eye or hand that causes stumbling; the spoils and their purification are then summarized.
121. 25.4Spiritually, the few soldiers are those in the church who fight sin and false doctrine with prayer, fasting, and the word, sharing their spoils with the quieter faithful; the numbers fifty and five hundred are holy, the latter more perfect.
122. 25.5Eleazar speaks only to “men of valour,” those who strive in the contest of self-control and study of God’s word; in this life’s war the angels watch what spoils each brings back, and our dwelling hereafter will be assigned according to the work tested by fire.
123. 25.6Even the victorious soldiers needed purification after the battle, so everyone who leaves the battle of this life, even the apostles who fought demons, needs purification before entering the holy city of God, whose door is Christ.
124. 26.1The officers’ offering after the Midianite war shows degrees of merit among God’s people: the unwarlike, the warriors, the “sum of the warriors,” and their princes, with boyhood able to grow into the higher ranks.
125. 26.2The “sum of the warriors,” among whom none dissented, are those wholly devoted to God and united in concord, who offer God their virtues and works as gold; without concord with one’s brother and with God’s commandments no victory or gift is acceptable.
126. 26.3Since the narrator of the Pentateuch is the Holy Spirit, the account of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh settling east of the Jordan must hold a meaning worthy of him that helps the reader escape the rich man’s torments; Origen asks his hearers to pray for its unveiling.
127. 26.4The exodus figures both conversion leading to baptism and the soul’s passage after death; the firstborn tribes who settled east of the Jordan because of their cattle signify the former people, which received its inheritance through Moses and not, through Jesus, in the land of promise of faith in Christ.
128. 26.5Moses lets the eastern tribes settle on condition that they fight alongside their brothers; Origen distinguishes the “dry ground” of fruitless souls from the “land” of the fruitful, promised to the meek, and teaches that those under the law receive their inheritance only by fighting together with Jesus’ people.
129. 26.6As the eastern tribes crossed the Jordan to help their brothers, so the holy fathers of old, not made perfect without us, help the church by their prayers, examples, and writings in the spiritual war that wins the heavenly inheritance under Jesus.
130. 26.7In a third reading, the tribes that cross the Jordan are the spiritual in the church, who attain the sweetness of wisdom and the heavenly Jerusalem under Jesus, while the carnal, with their beastly senses, remain outside with only the elementary knowledge of Christ crucified.
131. 27.1As bodies need different foods, so souls need different parts of Scripture: beginners prefer the plain books and shun Leviticus or Numbers, but nothing written by the Holy Spirit is superfluous, and we must ask God for understanding.
132. 27.2The list of stations, written by the word of the Lord, must profit us; it signifies both the soul’s progress from paganism to the knowledge of God and its passage through the “many dwellings” after death, Christ being the door to each.
133. 27.3The forty-two stations of the exodus correspond to the forty-two generations through which Christ descended; believers ascend by the same steps, beginning, as their first station, with faith in his birth from the Virgin.
134. 27.4After death the soul journeys through the dwellings prepared with the Father toward its homeland, paradise; the stations of the exodus, with their pursuits, songs, wars, and temptations, describe in mystery this ascent, which only those whose portion is the Lord complete.
135. 27.5The stations bear mystical names; after death the soul, led by the Son and the Holy Spirit, is illuminated more at each dwelling until it can bear the true light, while in this life the soul passes through trial after trial, going “from strength to strength.”
136. 27.6The list of stations is given twice to show the soul’s two ways, its advance in virtue in this life and its illumination through the dwellings after the resurrection; the “hand” of Moses and Aaron signifies the knowledge of the law joined with the works that please God.
137. 27.7The stations were written so that we might prepare for the journey to the kingdom and not waste life on the world’s pleasures, like the rich fool, lest we fall in the desert.
138. 27.8Israel left Egypt the day after the Passover, a festival kept now only “in part”; God’s vengeance on the gods of Egypt is executed whenever those whom demons deceived are converted, and above all when believers study the Scriptures.
139. 27.9The first stations show the soul’s first advances: leaving the turbulence of Rameses for the tents of Succoth, fighting in the valley of Etham, beginning with moderate abstinence at Hiroth, and looking toward the watchtower and magnificence to come.
140. 27.10The crossing of the Red Sea is the frightening temptation through which the law of God brings the believer safely, and the bitter waters that follow are the healing bitterness of discipline, which yields the sweetness of salvation.
141. 27.11Elim, with its twelve springs and seventy-two palms (the twelve and the seventy-two apostles), is the refreshment God gives after trials; Sin, “bush” and “temptation,” teaches the discernment of visions, a gift of the Holy Spirit.
142. 27.12Origen runs through the remaining stations, reading each name as a stage of the soul’s advance (health, labours, praise of judgment, the law, the burial of cravings, blessedness, vision, temptation, and so on) down to the plains by the Jordan, and defends this method by comparing the graded stages of a school.
143. 28.1Since the Jews no longer possess the land, the boundaries of Numbers 34 cannot be meant merely literally; following wisdom, Origen reads them as a shadow and image of the heavenly inheritance.
144. 28.2As the earthly land had named places, so the heavenly Jerusalem has regions in which the saints will receive their inheritance through Jesus according to their merits; the priests’ lands and the cities of refuge for involuntary sins will also have their heavenly counterparts.
145. 28.3Just as earthly lands differ greatly in fertility, climate, and civilization by God’s hidden judgment, so in the heavens Christ will assign each one a dwelling according to merit, including “cities of refuge.”
146. 28.4As the nations were distributed at the beginning according to the angels or sons of Israel, so at the end Christ, the last Adam, will distribute his own according to merit; Origen longs for the highest lot, to keep the true festivals in the heavenly Jerusalem and to reign with Christ.