Commentary on Matthew

Contents

Reading pages: 10.1–10.11 · 10.12–10.17 · 10.18–10.25 · 11.1–11.7 · 11.8–11.13 · 11.14–11.18 · 11.19–12.7 · 12.8–12.16 · 12.17–12.30 · 12.31–12.40 · 12.41–12.43 · 13.1–13.7 · 13.8–13.17 · 13.18–13.27 · 13.28–14.5 · 14.6–14.12 · 14.13–14.20 · 14.21–15.4 · 15.5–15.13 · 15.14–15.21 · 15.22–15.29 · 15.30–16.2 · 16.3–16.7 · 16.8–16.11 · 16.12–16.17 · 16.18–16.25 · 16.26–17.2 · 17.3–17.9 · 17.10–17.17 · 17.18–17.28 · 17.29–17.32 · 17.33–17.35

1. 10.1Origen explains that Jesus explains the parable only to the disciples who come to him in his house, and that the Gospel's plain letters hide deeper meanings.
2. 10.2Origen reads the good seed as sound thoughts sown in the soul by the Word and the weeds as wicked doctrines sown by the devil, to be burned at the end of the age.
3. 10.3Origen reconciles Daniel and Paul, who speak of differing glory among the righteous, with Jesus' saying that they will shine as one sun.
4. 10.4Origen argues that the treasure, the pearl and the net, told to the disciples in the house, are similitudes rather than parables.
5. 10.5The field may be Scripture with its plain words and the treasure its hidden meanings, or the field may be Christ, in whom the treasures of wisdom are hidden.
6. 10.6The finder hides the treasure because the secret meanings of Scripture are not to be disclosed to all, and buys the field by giving up all his former wickedness.
7. 10.7Origen gathers from a treatise on stones what is said about the kinds of pearls, their origins in India, Britain, the Bosporus and Acarnania, and how they form.
8. 10.8The fine pearls are the prophets, the one precious pearl is Christ, and the cloudy pearls of the marshes are the teachings of heretics.
9. 10.9The many fine pearls of the law and prophets prepare for the one pearl, Christ, as the partial glory of Moses prepares for the surpassing glory of the gospel.
10. 10.10As elementary teaching must be valued and then passed beyond, so the law and prophets prepare for the perfect understanding of the Gospel.
11. 10.11Against those who read the net as proof of fixed good and evil natures, Origen argues from Ezekiel that human beings become good or bad by free choice.
12. 10.12The net is Scripture, woven of law, prophets, Gospels and apostles, cast into the sea of human life, which angels will draw ashore at the end to separate good and bad.
13. 10.13Saved humans are not therefore above all angels; the church on earth contains the wicked until the angels separate them, and the bad will go into the furnace of which Ezekiel speaks.
14. 10.14Origen discusses how the unlettered disciples can be called scribes, and explains the scribe made a disciple of the kingdom as one who rises from the letter of Scripture to its spiritual meaning.
15. 10.15The scribe of the kingdom brings out old and new, holding law and prophets together with the Gospel, against those who divide the Godhead; the householder he imitates is Jesus.
16. 10.16Origen asks how the similitudes can be called parables, and reads Jesus' “own country,” where he was dishonoured, as all Judea in contrast to the Gentiles who honour him.
17. 10.17Origen explains the astonishment at Nazareth, says the brothers of Jesus were by some held to be Joseph's sons by a former wife so as to keep Mary a virgin, and cites Josephus on James.
18. 10.18Taken figuratively, the saying that a prophet has no honour in his own country fits all the prophets, persecuted by Israel, and Christians who live righteously and are dishonoured by the world.
19. 10.19Jesus did few mighty works at Nazareth because of unbelief; divine power and human faith work together, as weather and farming do in producing a harvest.
20. 10.20Origen asks how Herod could think Jesus was John risen from the dead, rejects transmigration, and suggests Herod thought John's powers had passed to Jesus as Elijah's spirit had passed to John.
21. 10.21With John's death the Jews' rulers lost the power of capital punishment, fulfilling Jacob's prophecy; Origen then turns to Herod's marriage to his brother's wife.
22. 10.22Origen reads Herodias’s dancing daughter as the vicious teaching that pleased Herod and silenced prophecy among the Jews, notes that no righteous man in Scripture keeps a birthday, and warns that not every oath should be kept.
23. 10.23Jesus’ withdrawal after John’s death teaches flight from avoidable persecution, and spiritually signifies the Word’s departure from the Jews to the Gentiles, whom he pities and heals.
24. 10.24Origen distinguishes the soul’s weakness, sickness, and sleep, using 1 Cor 11:30: not every sin is a sickness, only one that takes over the whole soul.
25. 10.25Jesus heals the sick before giving the loaves of blessing, as those who receive the Lord’s bread unworthily become weak, sick, or asleep.
26. 11.1The disciples’ “evening” and “the hour is past” signify the end of the age of the law and prophets; Jesus answers that the crowds need not go away, since he can feed them through his disciples.
27. 11.2Origen reads the five loaves as the sense-perceptible words of Scripture and the two fish as the spoken and inward word, or the word about Father and Son, multiplied by Jesus’ blessing, with twelve baskets of deeper teaching left for the disciples.
28. 11.3Origen reads the men, women, and children at the feeding as grades of spiritual maturity, the grass as the flesh put underfoot, the hundreds and fifties as sacred numbers, and the twelve baskets as belonging to the twelve apostles who judge the tribes.
29. 11.4Origen collects Gospel texts showing that the evangelists consistently distinguish the crowds, who need healing and hear parables, from the disciples, who know the mysteries of the kingdom.
30. 11.5Only the disciples, true “Hebrews” who cross over to the unseen, are sent to the other side; the boat is the struggle of temptation, in which they cannot overcome the contrary wind without Jesus.
31. 11.6Jesus prays for the crowds and the disciples; Origen applies the storm to the believer’s temptations, three watches of struggle against evil powers, until the Word comes in the fourth watch and rescues the doubting “Peter” in us.
32. 11.7The disciples confess Jesus as truly the Son of God, and the sick of Gennesaret, brought by others, are healed by touching the fringe of his garment.
33. 11.8The Pharisees, unmoved by the healings, can accuse the disciples only of breaking a tradition of the elders, not a commandment of God; Origen urges washing the hands of the soul before receiving Christ’s bread.
34. 11.9Origen explains Corban from what a Hebrew told him: a gift dedicated to the poor released a son from supporting his parents, a tradition that annulled God’s commandment; he warns church leaders who misuse the fund of the poor, like Judas.
35. 11.10The Corban tradition annuls both commandments, since calling one’s gift to parents Corban treats them as sacrilegious, and so speaks evil of them.
36. 11.11Origen sets out Isa 29:9–15 in full and applies the sealed book and the lip-service to the Jews who do not believe in Jesus, whose wisdom and prophecy God has removed.
37. 11.12Foods are indifferent in themselves; what defiles is evil speech and thought, greed, gluttony, or eating with a doubting conscience what is offered to demons, while the food laws are a shadow of spiritual nourishment.
38. 11.13The Pharisees, offended at Jesus’ teaching on food, are not the Father’s planting and are blind guides of the blind, while Jesus calls the crowd away from the literal sense of the law.
39. 11.14Against those who separate the God of the law from the Father of Jesus, Origen says the Pharisees were rejected for their misreading of the law, not for the law; and he argues that the bread of the Lord benefits only one who receives it with a pure conscience, the word spoken over it, not its matter, being what helps.
40. 11.15Evil thoughts in the heart are the spring of all sin and can corrupt even good acts such as almsgiving, chastity, teaching, and seeking the office of bishop; eating with an unwashed heart, not unwashed hands, defiles.
41. 11.16Jesus withdraws to the districts of Tyre (“constraint”) and Sidon (“hunters”), standing for the Gentiles, and the Canaanite woman (“prepared for humiliation”) comes out of those regions by faith, as the sinner who turns to virtue leaves the regions of evil.
42. 11.17The different petitioners and titles for Jesus signify different kinds of souls; the Canaanite woman, at first answered as a little dog, wins the children’s bread by great faith, and Origen rejects the transmigration of souls into animals while allowing that a soul may sink or rise in rationality.
43. 11.18The mountain where Jesus sits is the Church; the deaf, blind, lame, and maimed in soul, such as catechumens laid at the feet of Christ’s body, are healed in time, fulfilling Isaiah spiritually.
44. 11.19Origen compares the feeding of the four thousand with that of the five thousand detail by detail and judges those fed with the seven loaves a higher rank; he notes whom Jesus “sends away” and whom he does not.
45. 12.1The Pharisees and Sadducees, opposed on the resurrection, unite to test Jesus, as Herod and Pilate became friends against him and as hostile powers combine against Christ and his people.
46. 12.2The Pharisees sought a sign from heaven because they suspected earthly signs might come from Beelzebul, but signs from heaven too can be false, as in Job and in the coming man of sin; Jesus’ raising of Lazarus, calming of the sea, and teaching showed him truly the Son of God.
47. 12.3The sign of Jonah, Christ’s three days in the earth and his resurrection, was itself a sign from heaven, and every sign in Scripture points to something fulfilled later.
48. 12.4The Pharisees and Sadducees are “adulterous” because the soul, wedded to the law of the mind, has turned to the law of sin; with Rom 7 Origen describes the law as the soul’s husband, who dies for the perfect, who are then joined to the living Word, while the Word leaves the synagogue for the Gentiles.
49. 12.5The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees is the old teaching of the bare letter and the denial of the resurrection; disciples who have crossed to the spiritual must see and beware, for Christ himself is their living bread.
50. 12.6Leaven in Scripture signifies teaching; Jesus’ knowledge of the disciples’ thoughts shows his divinity, and all faith in this life is “little faith” compared with what is perfect.
51. 12.7Sins of the heart alone, such as adultery in the heart, are punished, though less than the act; a woman violated against her will remains chaste in heart though not pure in body.
52. 12.8As the Samaritan woman took Jesus’ water literally, the disciples may have taken the leaven literally; both must be understood figuratively, the leaven being the raw teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
53. 12.9The people’s opinions that Jesus was John, Elijah, Jeremiah, or a prophet came from unsound reasoning, while Peter, taught by the Father, confessed him as the Christ and Son of the living God.
54. 12.10Whoever confesses Christ as Peter did, by revelation from the Father, becomes a Peter, and on every such disciple, a “rock,” the Church is built by God.
55. 12.11Origen argues that the promises to Peter—the rock, the keys, binding and loosing—belong to every disciple who confesses Christ as Peter did, and that the gates of Hades cannot prevail against the rock or the Church, which are one.
56. 12.12Every sin is a gate of Hades; a soul stained by sin is no rock and no part of the Church, however many claim membership, and each heretic, such as Marcion, Basilides, and Valentinus, has built a gate of Hades.
57. 12.13Opposed to the gates of Hades, which are vices and hostile powers, are the gates of Zion, the virtues, at each of which the soul lifted from the gates of death declares a praise of God.
58. 12.14The keys of the kingdom, one for each virtue, are given to whoever is not overcome by the gates of Hades; bishops who claim Peter’s power to bind and loose judge soundly only if they have Peter’s works and are not themselves bound by sin.
59. 12.15Why does Jesus forbid the disciples to say he is the Christ, when he had sent them to preach? Origen answers that belief is less than knowledge, and knowledge itself has degrees, the highest coming by the Father’s revelation, as Peter received it.
60. 12.16Perhaps the apostles at first proclaimed Jesus’ great deeds as an introduction, the truth that he was the Christ being built on them later, as much said to the apostles applies to all believers.
61. 12.17If the apostles had already proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, he now held back the fuller teaching—the crucified and risen Christ—for a fitting time, to spare new believers the offence of the cross.
62. 12.18Alternatively, Jesus kept the title Christ for the fuller, saving proclamation of the crucified and risen Christ, whose cross triumphed over the principalities and the ruler of this world.
63. 12.19Proclaiming Christ without the cross is defective, so Jesus prepared the disciples to preach him as crucified and risen, “showing” them this more clearly than bodily sight could.
64. 12.20Jesus had to suffer in the earthly Jerusalem so as to make the firstfruits of the resurrection in the heavenly one, ending the earthly worship; his rising on the third day frees believers from a triad of evil powers, so that they may be baptized into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the three eternal days.
65. 12.21Peter, not yet taught the necessity of the Passion, rebuked Jesus from ignorance; Jesus approved his intention but rebuked his ignorance, telling him to “get behind” him again and calling him “Satan,” that is, adversary.
66. 12.22To be “behind” Jesus is good, as following him; to cast God’s words behind oneself or walk behind one’s desires is evil; and Jesus’ “turning” is always for the good of those to whom he turns.
67. 12.23Though one perfected in love cannot be made to stumble, Peter, minding human things, was a stumbling block to Jesus; much more are professing disciples who mind earthly things, and teachers like Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion.
68. 12.24To follow Jesus one must deny one’s former sinful self; the righteous confess not themselves but Christ, who is righteousness, and every act of the perfect is a witness to Christ, as each takes up the cross that Simon of Cyrene carried and that Jesus bears for himself.
69. 12.25Self-denial is Paul’s “no longer I who live, but Christ in me”; as Christ died by the cross, so believers die to sin only by being crucified with him.
70. 12.26Origen gives two readings of “whoever would save his life will lose it”: clinging to bodily life loses blessedness while dying for the truth saves the soul; or, one who seeks salvation must lose his soul to the world for Christ’s sake.
71. 12.27Each should lose his sinning soul to the world for Christ’s sake so as to gain the soul that is saved; it is far better to lose the world than the soul.
72. 12.28No one can give an exchange for his soul, but God gave the precious blood of Christ; Origen relates this to Isaiah’s “I gave Egypt, Ethiopia, and Syene as your exchange.”
73. 12.29The Son of Man came first without form or beauty to bear our sins, and will come in the Father’s glory, restored to the form of God and making his disciples conformed to it.
74. 12.30To beginners the Word has the form of a servant, but to the perfect he comes in glory with his angels, the words of the prophets; at Christ’s judgment seat the perfect have their sins wiped out, apostates lose their former good deeds, and those in between receive both.
75. 12.31Some refer the promise that some would not taste death to the three apostles who saw the Transfiguration; Origen calls this a reading fit for beginners, “milk,” while the mature seek the solid food of Scripture.
76. 12.32Those who stand beside Jesus do not stand equally; only those who stand best, such as a Peter or the sons of thunder, see the Word in his royal glory and do not taste death.
77. 12.33Christ is the life and the living bread, death his enemy and the dead bread; the soul feeds on one or the other through the doctrines it accepts, and those who stand firm in virtue, like Peter and the sons of thunder, do not even taste death.
78. 12.34“Until” does not set a limit after which the opposite happens, as Christ’s “I am with you until the end of the age” shows; so those who have seen the Son of Man in his kingdom will not taste death afterward either.
79. 12.35Scripture speaks of seeing, tasting, being followed, overtaken, and swallowed by death as degrees of evil; to see the Son of Man in his kingdom and glory is to see the Word triumph over falsehood and reign within the perfect.
80. 12.36The Transfiguration “after six days” signifies passing beyond the six days of the created, visible world; one who no longer loves the world keeps a new sabbath and sees the Word transfigured, as each can receive.
81. 12.37Jesus is transfigured “before them,” not before all: to those who rise to wisdom the Jesus of the Gospels is known no longer according to the flesh but in the form of God, the sun of righteousness.
82. 12.38Jesus’ shining garments are the words of the Gospels and apostles, made bright to one who understands them; Moses and Elijah are the law and the prophets, seen in glory when understood spiritually in harmony with Jesus.
83. 12.39The Word is transfigured as he prays to the Father on the mountain; his garments, whiter than any earthly fuller can make them, are the Scriptures, whose despised wording shines with meaning beyond the polished style of worldly wisdom.
84. 12.40Peter, “not knowing what he said,” may have spoken under a spirit not yet conquered by the cross, seeking to keep Jesus from his saving passion; or, more simply, he wished to stay and enjoy the vision of glory.
85. 12.41Figuratively, Peter and the sons of thunder may have wished to make tents within themselves for the Word, the law, and the prophecy, preferring contemplation; but love, which does not seek its own, brought Jesus down to those below.
86. 12.42God answers Peter’s three tents with a better tent, the bright cloud, a pattern of the resurrection; Origen suggests it may be the Father’s power, the Holy Spirit, the Saviour, or the shared light of Father, Son, and Spirit over the true disciples.
87. 12.43The apostles fall before the voice from the cloud, and after the Word’s touch see Jesus alone: the law and the prophets become one with the Gospel; Jesus forbids telling the vision until after the resurrection, lest the crowds be harmed at seeing the glorified one crucified.
88. 13.1Origen explains the disciples' question about Elijah and argues at length that “Elijah” in John cannot mean a transmigrated soul, since transmigration contradicts the Scriptures on the end of the world.
89. 13.2Origen argues that John was “Elijah” not by the same soul but by Elijah's spirit and power, distinguishes spirit from soul, and asks who “did to him whatever they wished.”
90. 13.3Origen notes that Jesus comes down to the crowds to heal, and suggests comparing the healings in which the sufferer, someone else, or no one asks.
91. 13.4Origen interprets the moonstruck boy figuratively as souls that seem healthy but are periodically seized by passions, falling into the fire of lust or the water of worldly life.
92. 13.5Origen takes the boy's father as his guardian angel, the dumb and deaf spirit as irrational impulses, and explains faith like a mustard seed that removes mountains.
93. 13.6Origen explains epilepsy not by the moon but by an unclean spirit that times its attacks to the moon's phases so as to slander God's creation, and rejects astrology.
94. 13.7Origen explains “faithless and perverse generation,” takes the mountains moved by faith as hostile powers lodged in souls, and advises prayer and fasting rather than addressing the spirit.
95. 13.8Origen distinguishes this prediction from the earlier one and argues, by the example of Job, that the Father delivered the Son to hostile powers out of love, while they delivered him to men to bring him under death.
96. 13.9Origen explains the devil's power of death as spiritual death, holds that the powers of this age delivered Jesus to men, and notes that the disciples grieved at the death but overlooked the resurrection.
97. 13.10Origen interprets the temple-tax coin: Jesus, who bore no image of Caesar, took the coin from the fish's mouth to pay for himself and Peter without making Caesar's image his own.
98. 13.11Origen explains “the sons are free” of those who are sons of God rather than of earthly kings, and says Jesus paid the tax so as not to offend even those of whom nothing good was expected.
99. 13.12Origen applies the fish with the coin in its mouth to a lover of money converted by a teacher, who now has God's oracles in his mouth instead of money.
100. 13.13Origen contrasts the holy double drachma of the Law with the profane tax that Jesus paid by the stater from the fish.
101. 13.14Origen explains why Matthew dates the question “Who is greatest?” to the day of the stater: the disciples suspected that Jesus had preferred Peter, or wondered which of the three was greatest.
102. 13.15Origen draws from the disciples' question a model for bringing questions to Jesus and to the church's teachers, and shows from Scripture that there are degrees of greatness.
103. 13.16In the simple sense, Origen explains becoming like children as reaching by reason the freedom from lust, anger, grief, pleasure, fear, grudges, and pride that small children have by age.
104. 13.17Origen explains who are the “little ones” who can be made to stumble, and gives interpretations of the donkey millstone as a healing punishment, the heavy body of the wicked, or the body taken up by hostile powers.
105. 13.18As a further interpretation, offered “as doctrine or for exercise,” Origen suggests that the child Jesus set among the disciples is the Holy Spirit, who humbled himself for human salvation.
106. 13.19Origen compares Mark and Luke on the dispute about greatness, reads the child Jesus took as the Holy Spirit, and discusses receiving the kingdom “as a child.”
107. 13.20Origen distinguishes senses of “world” (kosmos) in Scripture and argues that in sayings like this one it means the inhabited earth and its people.
108. 13.21Origen argues that the woe on the world does not touch true disciples, who are not of the world, but does touch nominal disciples who love worldly life.
109. 13.22Origen identifies the stumbling-blocks with the devil's army, which uses unbelievers and even nominal believers as instruments, and warns against causing weaker believers to stumble.
110. 13.23Origen explains in what sense stumbling-blocks are “necessary”: wickedness precedes virtue in human beings and evil powers work through people, but the stumbling-blocks arise from free will, not from nature or from God.
111. 13.24Origen applies the cutting off of hand, foot, and eye to members of the church who cause others to stumble, and to faculties of the soul used sinfully.
112. 13.25Origen applies the cutting off of hand, foot, and eye to relatives, friends, or a wife who draw one away from godliness, who must be given up for the sake of salvation.
113. 13.26Origen explains smallness and greatness of soul as matters of free choice, and suggests that the little ones are cared for by angels while the perfect are cared for by the Lord himself.
114. 13.27Origen asks whether the guardian angels of the little ones take charge of them from their baptism or from their birth, and cites texts that favour birth.
115. 13.28Origen sets out views on when guardian angels take charge (from baptism, or even an angel converted along with its human charge), and answers an objection from Acts 12 about Peter's angel.
116. 13.29Origen gives another view, that the “little ones” are the perfect who humble themselves, even apostles and bishops, and notes that even the righteous can fall.
117. 13.30Origen discusses whether Matthew's steps of reproof apply to all sins or only lesser ones, notes that the Gospel leaves undecided the fate of one who does not listen, and urges repentance after any number of sins.
118. 13.31Origen applies “whatever you bind on earth” to those who admonish a sinner three times, and argues that Peter's power of the keys extends to all the heavens while theirs extends to one.
119. 14.1Origen explains “agreement” from its musical sense, gives scriptural examples of two or three who agreed, and says that prayers go unanswered because believers do not agree in doctrine or in life.
120. 14.2Origen reports an earlier interpreter's reading of the “two who agree” as husband and wife abstaining from intercourse by agreement for prayer, and notes that it encourages agreement rather than dissolving marriage.
121. 14.3Another interpretation takes the two who agree as body and spirit in the perfected, and the three as spirit, soul, and body gathered in Christ's name.
122. 14.4Origen applies the agreement of two to the harmony of the Old and New Testaments, with the Holy Spirit as the third, and notes that Christ says “there I am,” not “I will be.”
123. 14.5Origen rejects a literal counting of forgivable offences and interprets Peter's seven and Jesus' seventy-seven by the symbolism of numbers, distinguishing sins in worldly matters from graver sins.
124. 14.6Origen states the plain moral of the parable of the unforgiving servant, that God's forgiveness can be revoked if we do not forgive others, and lists the questions a higher, mystical interpretation would have to answer.
125. 14.7Origen identifies the king of the parable with the Son of God, the kingdom itself, united with the man Jesus, and explains the settling of accounts by the different gifts entrusted to each soul.
126. 14.8Origen asks who the king's servants are, likens good and bad deeds to profit and loss weighed by God alone, and places the settling of accounts at the judgment seat of Christ.
127. 14.9Origen explains that at the judgment God will bring to each person's memory all his deeds at once, so that the judgment, like the resurrection, takes place in a moment.
128. 14.10Origen explains why the debtor of many talents comes first at the start of the reckoning, links the debt to grave sins, and suggests he may be the man of sin or the devil.
129. 14.11Origen follows the parable of the unforgiving servant, notes that the king forgave more than was asked, and confesses that only Jesus can fully explain who the debtor and his fellow servant are.
130. 14.12Origen explains why the evangelists left the parables unexplained and places the king's reckoning at the final judgment, comparing the parables of the talents and of the minas.
131. 14.13Origen interprets the debtor as a ruling power with “wife and children” among the nations, notes details of the parable, and turns it against heretics who reject a God who punishes.
132. 14.14Origen reflects on the phrase “when Jesus had finished these words,” asking whether it is used of anyone but Jesus and connecting “finished” (etelesen) with initiation into divine mysteries.
133. 14.15Origen notes that Jesus went to the borders of Judea beyond the Jordan, and distinguishes crowds who merely follow from disciples who rise, leave all, and follow.
134. 14.16Origen explains the Pharisees' trap about divorce, Jesus' answer from Genesis that not every cause dissolves a marriage, marriage as God's joining and a gift of grace, and condemns those who forbid marriage.
135. 14.17Origen applies “one flesh” to Christ and the church, saying that the synagogue separated herself from Christ by unfaithfulness, and that nothing can separate the church from Christ.
136. 14.18Origen takes up Deuteronomy's law of the bill of divorce, asks whether a law Moses gave because of hardness of heart has a spiritual sense, and compares Paul's counsel to widows given “in my judgment.”
137. 14.19Origen reads Deuteronomy's law of divorce allegorically of the synagogue, divorced by Christ for unfaithfulness, with the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the temple worship as the bill of divorce.
138. 14.20Continuing his allegory of the bill of divorce, Origen asks how the divorced synagogue can be saved, since Deuteronomy forbids the first husband to take her back, and explains the lawgiver's freedom to change the law.
139. 14.21Origen applies the law of divorce to the soul and its guardian angel, citing the Shepherd of Hermas on souls that fall from Michael to the angels of luxury, punishment, and repentance.
140. 14.22Origen asks why Paul excludes twice-married men from church office, even when they may be more chaste than the once-married, and suggests that the rule is symbolic of the soul that has not been divorced from Christ.
141. 14.23Origen says some laws, in the Old and New Testaments alike, are concessions to weakness, and reports that some church leaders have let a wife remarry while her husband is alive, against Scripture but not wholly without reason.
142. 14.24Origen discusses Jesus' exception for sexual immorality, asks whether a man may divorce a wife guilty of poisoning, murder, or theft, notes other ways a husband can make his wife commit adultery, and teaches that celibacy is a gift God gives to those who ask.
143. 15.1Origen sets out two mistaken readings of the three kinds of eunuch in Matt 19:12: that all three are bodily (which led some to castrate themselves), and that only the third is figurative.
144. 15.2Other sayings of Jesus taken literally (buying a sword, greeting no one on the road, cutting off a hand or eye) show that the letter of the New Testament too can kill.
145. 15.3Origen rejects literal self-castration, answering Sextus and Philo with the Law and with Paul, warning of its bodily harms, and arguing that Marcion’s refusal of allegory leaves him no consistent position.
146. 15.4Origen reads all three kinds of eunuch figuratively: those continent by nature, those continent because of human teaching (philosophers or heretics), and those who cut out passion by the Word of God for the kingdom.
147. 15.5Taking the three kinds of eunuch spiritually, Origen contrasts Pharaoh’s eunuchs with Nehemiah, the eunuch who rebuilt Jerusalem, and Daniel and his companions, barren toward Babylon but fruitful in the Spirit.
148. 15.6The children brought to Jesus are also the spiritually immature in the church; the evangelists’ silence about who brought them may point to angels, and Jesus’ touch and prayer protect those he touches.
149. 15.7The disciples who rebuke those bringing children may stand for those who despise simple teachers of simple believers; Christ himself became a child, and Paul became like a nurse.
150. 15.8Mature believers must not despise the simple but become children with them; and Matthew’s wording raises the question why Jesus is said to lay on hands but not to pray.
151. 15.9Jesus’ prayer may be reserved for those beyond childhood, while his touch suffices for children; Luke’s saying about receiving the kingdom as a child teaches the mature to become children to the simple.
152. 15.10Only God is good in the proper sense; others are called good by extension, and Origen compares the Saviour, the image of God’s goodness, with the Father and with lesser goods.
153. 15.11Against those who slander the God of the Law, Origen argues that God’s striking, wounding, and wrath are works of his goodness, like a physician’s or a father’s discipline.
154. 15.12To be “outside life” is to be estranged from Christ, who is the life, or, for the righteous on earth, to live still in its shadow; we enter life in proportion as we keep the commandments.
155. 15.13The commandments Jesus lists are the minimum for entering the beginning of life; even partners of thieves and adulterers are excluded, and love of neighbour, which sums up the commandments, leads to perfection.
156. 15.14Origen asks whether “love your neighbour” in Matt 19:19 is a scribal addition, since Mark and Luke lack it, describes the many differences among Gospel copies and his own obelus-and-asterisk method for the Septuagint, and offers an alternative explanation.
157. 15.15Selling everything is possible: the Cynic Crates did it for philosophy, and the first believers in Acts did it; Ananias and Sapphira died under the force of Peter’s rebuke, and bishops should encourage such renunciation.
158. 15.16Origen raises the difficulty that selling one’s goods cannot by itself free a person at once from anger, grief, fear, desire, and pleasure, or make him wise, and so cannot by itself make him perfect.
159. 15.17A literal answer: the prayers of the poor whom the renouncer helps bring him divine help, so that from that day he begins to grow, like Isaac, toward virtue and freedom from passion.
160. 15.18A figurative reading: the rich man’s possessions are the vices and evil spirits he has acquired, which he must “sell” back to the evil powers, the true “poor,” in order to become perfect and have treasure in heaven.
161. 15.19The young man’s going away grieving shows how hard it is to stop thinking wealth and glory good; read literally, he is half praiseworthy for keeping the commandments and half blameworthy for preferring his possessions.
162. 15.20Jesus says a rich man enters the kingdom with difficulty, not that he cannot; the camel and the needle’s eye show the narrowness of the entry, which God alone can make passable.
163. 15.21Read literally, Peter’s claim to have left everything is valued by God for its intention, not for the size of what he left—his nets, and probably his house, wife, and family—and Jesus answers with a great promise.
164. 15.22Taken figuratively, Peter left everything in which he had been a sinner and followed Christ as righteousness, wisdom, and truth; the twelve thrones belong to the regeneration at the resurrection.
165. 15.23Baptism, the washing of regeneration, is the prelude to the final regeneration, the baptism of Spirit and fire, when the Son of Man sits on his throne, death is abolished, and the saints share his glory.
166. 15.24In the final restoration the Word returns to his glory with the Father, the man Jesus being one with him; the apostles and those who live like them will judge an Israel noble by birth but unbelieving.
167. 15.25Those who leave family and property for Christ’s name receive many times as much: brothers and sisters in faith, bishops and presbyters as parents, and, in the higher sense, heavenly kin and the dwellings of God’s city.
168. 15.26“The first will be last” warns those proud of long Christian ancestry or clerical forebears, and applies to unbelieving Israel and to the believing nations, though not every Israelite is last nor every Gentile believer first.
169. 15.27The first and last may be angels and men: fallen angels, including the devil, become last, while believers renewed in baptism become first; the parable of the labourers that follows shows that both first and last are saved.
170. 15.28The parable of the labourers hides deep doctrines: the day, the hours, the five groups of workers, the different terms of hire, and the marketplace and idleness all call for explanation.
171. 15.29Origen asks why the wages are paid from the last to the first, who the steward is, and notes that only those hired at dawn bore the whole burden of the day.
172. 15.30Only one who has “the mind of Christ” and is taught by the Paraclete can explain this parable; Matthew knew its mysteries but deliberately did not write down its explanation.
173. 15.31The “day” of the parable may be the whole present age, short compared with the life of God; Origen hints at a sequence of ages, of which the feasts and sabbatical years of the Law may be figures.
174. 15.32The five callings of workers may be the ages of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ’s coming at the eleventh hour, the one Christ having called workers in every age.
175. 15.33As an exercise, the five callings may correspond to the five senses: touch for Adam, smell for Noah, taste for Abraham, hearing for Moses, and sight for the coming of Christ.
176. 15.34The hours correspond to the works needed in each age, the new covenant being the last; the denarius is salvation; and the idleness of the eleventh-hour workers hints at a secret doctrine about the soul.
177. 15.35Origen suggests that the place outside the vineyard is the state of souls before the body, that the vineyard extends beyond this life, that the eleventh-hour workers are Christ’s own, and that the vineyard is the kingdom of God.
178. 15.36A simpler reading takes the day as a human life: the hours are childhood, youth, manhood, age, and the brink of death; salvation is given equally because God weighs the choice, not the length of service.
179. 15.37On the simpler reading the vineyard is the church; those who fall away after being called cannot plead “no one hired us,” though they may still repent and return; Origen ends by asking his readers’ pardon.
180. 16.1Christ went up to Jerusalem knowing what awaited him, and Paul imitated him despite Agabus’s warning; yet wisdom in Christ must discern when to face danger and when to withdraw.
181. 16.2Judas was still one of the twelve and was taken aside with them, not yet given up; this time the disciples kept silent, remembering Jesus’ rebuke of Peter.
182. 16.3Origen links the Passion to the fall of Jerusalem and the end of its priesthood and temple, reads the earthly temple as a shadow replaced by the heavenly, and applies the Passion figuratively to the Jews of his own day, while the nations see Christ the great light.
183. 16.4The request of the sons of Zebedee, taken literally, seems slight; gathering the biblical texts on God’s and Christ’s sitting and enthronement, Origen argues that such sitting, right and left, is spiritual, not bodily.
184. 16.5Christ’s sitting on his throne is his restoration to his kingdom when sin and every hostile power are abolished; the right and left may be the invisible and visible creation; the places are the Father’s to give.
185. 16.6The cup and the baptism both signify martyrdom: a cup in the enduring of pain, a baptism in the forgiveness of sins it brings; James and John drank it, James killed by Herod and John exiled to Patmos.
186. 16.7Another view: as Christ’s food is doing the Father’s will, his cup is contemplation; so at the Last Supper the bread, given first, signifies action and the cup knowledge.
187. 16.8Jesus forbids church leaders to lord it over others as Gentile rulers do, a fault Origen sees among bishops of his day; Christ came to serve and gave his soul as a ransom to the evil one, who could not hold it, his divinity not being the ransom.
188. 16.9Accepting the healing of the two blind men as history, Origen seeks its meaning through faith: Jericho is the world, and the crowd that follows Jesus and his disciples out of it is led toward Jerusalem.
189. 16.10The two blind men by the road are Israel and Judah before Christ’s coming, sitting by the law and the prophets without seeing their meaning, and knowing Jesus only as son of David according to the flesh.
190. 16.11Christ stops and calls the blind who ask for sight; so readers blind to Scripture’s meaning should ask him to open their eyes, that they may follow him and see God with a pure heart.
191. 16.12Literally, the blind men in Matthew, Mark, and Luke may be different healings; figuratively, Bartimaeus is the Israelite remnant, and the Ebionite who believes Jesus a son of Joseph is rebuked by Gentile believers in the virgin birth, yet is healed when he calls him Rabbouni.
192. 16.13Luke places the healing as Jesus approaches Jericho, Mark as he enters and leaves, Matthew as he leaves; mystically these are stages, and Luke’s blind man, who must be brought to Jesus, is the least advanced.
193. 16.14The blind man in Luke follows Jesus glorifying God; then Origen turns to the entry into Jerusalem, asking why the evangelists record the ass and the colt, quoting Zech 9:9–12, and noting how Matthew and John alter the prophecy’s wording.
194. 16.15Zion and Jerusalem, bidden to rejoice, are the heavenly city; the tied ass and colt are the synagogue and the Gentile people, loosed from sin through the apostles’ teaching so that Christ may ride on them and give them rest.
195. 16.16The ass and colt, once ridden by Christ into Jerusalem, are sent back transformed to a higher work; Zechariah’s prophecy of peace explains Zion’s joy; and Origen compares five Greek versions of Zech 9:9 (meek, hearkening, poor).
196. 16.17Bethphage (“house of jaws”) and Bethany (“house of obedience”) are interpreted, and the two disciples who untie the ass and colt may be Peter and Paul, ministers to the circumcision and to the nations, who loose them from sin for Christ to ride.
197. 16.18The disciples’ garments on the ass and colt are the teachers’ adornment on which the Word sits; the crowd, the branch-cutters, and those going before and after Jesus (the righteous before and after his coming) form orders of a single chorus of praise.
198. 16.19Christ’s entry into Jerusalem figures his ascension, at which the heavenly powers ask “Who is this?”; Origen explains “Hosanna” as the Hebrew of Ps 118:25, garbled by Greek copyists, and gives Aquila’s rendering.
199. 16.20Origen refers to his fuller treatment of the cleansing of the temple in his Commentary on John, and explains it first literally: Jesus, a carpenter’s supposed son, boldly drove out those who turned the house of prayer into a market.
200. 16.21The church is now the living temple, but some in it, perhaps even its leaders, make it a den of robbers through greed and luxury; Christ weeps over it and will come to scourge and cleanse it.
201. 16.22The three kinds driven from the temple are worldly church members, deacons who enrich themselves from funds for the poor, and bishops and presbyters who appoint unworthy rulers over the flock; Christ will judge them at his second coming.
202. 16.23Every rational soul is a temple of God, which sins fill with robber thoughts; those who chose Barabbas over Jesus are, in Origen’s reading, ruled by the robber still.
203. 16.24In the church, the house of prayer, some are blind and some lame; recognizing this and that only the Word of God can heal them, they come to him and are healed.
204. 16.25The indignant chief priests stand for bishops whose lives dishonour their office and who despise and accuse simple, fervent believers; Christ defends the children, from whose mouths God perfects praise.
205. 16.26Leaving Jerusalem for Bethany, the church, Christ curses the fruitless fig tree, which Origen reads as the synagogue; the mountain cast into the sea is Satan, removed from believers by the faith and teaching of Christ’s disciples.
206. 16.27Every obedient soul is a Bethany where Jesus rests; each person is a fig tree from which Christ seeks the fruits of the Spirit, and those who fail him in temptation—by denial or sexual sin—wither at once.
207. 16.28A disciple “withers” the fig tree when he exposes, by sound teaching, a professing believer who bears no fruit of wisdom; disciples who believe receive what they ask, asking only for great and heavenly things.
208. 16.29Mark’s “it was not the season for figs” teaches that Christ seeks the fruits of the Spirit even out of season—love for enemies, joy in suffering—since God calls believers to be “gods” and more than human; we must ask for great and heavenly things.
209. 17.1Origen asks what the chief priests really meant by their two questions about Jesus’ authority, and rejects the simple view that they were asking only whether it came from God or the devil.
210. 17.2Origen suggests that the question concerned the many orders of good and hostile “authorities,” a hidden teaching that Jesus would have explained, with examples from the exodus onward, had his questioners been worthy.
211. 17.3Jesus refused to answer because his questioners were unworthy; he asked about John deliberately, since John was the forerunner whose baptism from heaven bore on Jesus’ own authority.
212. 17.4The parable of the two sons concerns disobedient Israel and the believing Gentiles, and also those who promise little but do much, or promise much but do nothing.
213. 17.5The tax collectors and prostitutes go ahead of Israel into the kingdom, which implies that Israel too will enter when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
214. 17.6Origen gives the simple reading of the parable of the tenants (Israel as the vineyard, the prophets as servants, Christ as the son) and then asks why God is called a man, a householder, or a king in the parables.
215. 17.7Comparing the parable with Isaiah’s song of the vineyard, Origen argues that in the Gospel the vineyard is not the people but the kingdom of God, that is, the Scriptures, with the hedge, winepress, and tower as levels of their meaning.
216. 17.8The ripening of the vine through its seasons pictures the soul’s growth from infancy through imperfect stages to the mature fruit of virtue and the beatitudes.
217. 17.9God alone knows when each soul’s season of fruit has come; the servants sent for the fruit are the prophets, whom Israel’s leaders beat, killed, and stoned.
218. 17.10“They will respect my son” was not a mistaken prediction: the tenants did inwardly respect the Son, recognizing him as the heir, even though they did not act on it.
219. 17.11Like Herod, who believed Jesus was the Christ yet tried to kill him, the leaders recognized the heir and still killed him, and then unwittingly pronounced their own sentence.
220. 17.12Christ, the stone rejected by the builders, became the head of the corner uniting the two Testaments; the kingdom was only “let out” to Israel but is “given” to the nation that bears its fruit.
221. 17.13The leaders could not seize Jesus because of the crowds; unlike them, the bride of the Song seeks and holds him rightly, and no opponent can seize or overturn the mind of Christ.
222. 17.14The crowds rightly but inadequately held Jesus to be a prophet; he is the Son and Wisdom of God, and those who teach falsely about him, though they gather in his name, scatter.
223. 17.15In the general reading of the wedding feast, the king is God, the marriage is the church’s restoration to Christ, the servants are the prophets, and the burning of the city is the fall of Jerusalem.
224. 17.16The apostles called Gentiles bad and good alike to the wedding, but all must put on the wedding garment of the virtues, or be cast into the outer darkness.
225. 17.17Turning to a deeper reading, Origen sets out who in the parable reigns and who is ruled, and asks why God is likened to a “man” and king, recalling an earlier allegorist’s two texts on God as like and unlike a man.
226. 17.18Against those who reject the God of the Old Testament for his human-like passions, Origen points out that the Gospel parables also call God a man and show the king who gives the wedding feast as angry.
227. 17.19God is likened to a man, a panther, a lion, or a consuming fire only for the sake of sinners; at the restoration of all things he will be seen as he is, as light.
228. 17.20Origen explains “Son of Man” as meaning that the Son, imitating God who in parables is called a man, becomes by dispensation the son of that “man,” who is God.
229. 17.21Origen asks whether the kingdom is likened to a throne or a dominion among higher powers, and distinguishes the bride, the servants, and the guests as different orders of souls in the spiritual marriage of the Word.
230. 17.22The king’s dinner of oxen and fatted animals is the solid, abundant spiritual teaching of the mysteries, first offered to gifted Israelite souls who would not come.
231. 17.23Those who neglect the call are less guilty than those who, armed with sophistries, insult and kill God’s messengers; God’s army destroys their systems of doctrine, and the call goes out to all.
232. 17.24The guest without the wedding garment is one who kept the vices he had before faith; bound and cast out, he will weep and gnash his teeth, and the churches too have many called but few chosen.
233. 17.25Origen sets the question about the census tax in its history: Jewish resistance to Roman statues in the temple and the debate, stirred by Judas the Galilean, over paying tribute.
234. 17.26The trap lay in the two groups sent: forbidding the tax would expose Jesus to the Herodians, allowing it to the Pharisees; he answered by examining the coin, teaching that both Caesar and God receive their due.
235. 17.27Figuratively, Caesar’s due is what the body reasonably needs, and God’s due is the virtue that suits the soul made in God’s image; excessive bodily austerity is like refusing Caesar his tax.
236. 17.28Another reading takes Caesar as the ruler of this age, whose things are our vices; Origen adds that hostile questions should be answered carefully, and that those who leave the Word after hearing him are like the Pharisees who left Jesus.
237. 17.29The Sadducees, like the Samaritans and some Corinthians, denied not only the resurrection of the flesh but any survival of the soul; Origen argues that Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15 are aimed at that denial.
238. 17.30The Sadducees’ fable of seven brothers assumed that the risen keep male and female bodies; Jesus answered that the risen neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels, and Origen leaves aside the question whether some angels were once human.
239. 17.31Origen allegorizes levirate marriage: the soul is married first to the letter of the law, which bears no children, and then to its brother, the spiritual law, whose offspring are good works that still bear the name of the law of God.
240. 17.32Origen gives three readings of the brother who refuses the levirate duty: a doctrine that despises the law’s letter, the heresies that separate the law from the Gospel, and a disciple who will not carry on a wise man’s teaching.
241. 17.33The Sadducees’ story wrongly assumes that earthly relations continue after the resurrection; in the new age there will be no marriage or fleshly kinship, and the only marriage is the spiritual one of the bridegroom, the king’s son.
242. 17.34Jesus says the Sadducees do not know the Scriptures because the Old Testament teaches the absence of marriage in the resurrection only figuratively; its marriage laws, like Paul’s reading of Abraham’s wives and of Genesis 2:24, point to Christ and the church.
243. 17.35Since the Old Testament teaches the absence of marriage in the resurrection only figuratively, reading it literally leads to absurdities; Jesus proved the resurrection to the Sadducees from God’s words at the bush, for he is God of the living, and the patriarchs live to him.