Homilies on Exodus

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.5 · 2.1–2.4 · 3.1–3.3 · 4.1–4.9 · 5.1–5.5 · 6.1–6.14 · 7.1–7.8 · 8.1–8.5 · 8.6–9.4 · 10.1–10.4 · 11.1–11.7 · 12.1–12.4 · 13.1–13.7

1. 1.1Origen compares every word of Scripture to a seed that grows into a tree when it is cultivated spiritually, and asks his hearers' prayers before expounding the opening of Exodus.
2. 1.2The descent of Jacob's house into Egypt is a mystery of the soul's descent into this world, and the privileges of Levi and Judah and the 144,000 virgins of the Apocalypse point to spiritual fathers known only to God.
3. 1.3The seventy-five “souls” who went down with Jacob point to the begetting of souls, which only those like Paul can do, and Adam's silence about the soul shows that the soul is not of the earth.
4. 1.4The multiplying of Israel after Joseph's death figures the growth of the Church after Christ's death and the increase of virtues once vices are put to death.
5. 1.5The king who did not know Joseph is the wisdom of the flesh that rules a soul which forgets Christ, or the devil, who fears the people of God and builds his cities in human minds, while Christ sends teachers to lead us out of Egypt.
6. 2.1Since the midwives' disobedience makes no sense literally, Pharaoh's killing of the males and sparing of the females is read as the devil's war on the rational spirit while he fosters the life of the flesh.
7. 2.2The two midwives figure rational and moral learning, or better the law and the Gospels, which teach the fear of God, build up the churches, and nourish only virtue.
8. 2.3Pharaoh's order to drown the Hebrew boys figures the devil's attack on the soul's good beginnings, and good deeds done for human praise are boys handed over to the Egyptians.
9. 2.4Moses, hidden by his Levite parents and rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, figures the law received by the Church of the Gentiles, which understands it spiritually while the Synagogue keeps only the letter.
10. 3.1Moses, eloquent by Egyptian standards, confesses himself slow of speech once he knows the divine Word, before whom every human being is mute.
11. 3.2God opens the mouths, ears, and eyes of the saints, as the devil opens the mouths of liars and heretics; only one who meets Moses on the mountain, in the law's spiritual sense, has his mouth opened by God.
12. 3.3The three days' journey out of Egypt is Christ and the purification of word, deed, and thought; Pharaoh resists and mocks those who leave the world, but the word of God stirs up a war against vice in which believers must stand firm.
13. 4.1Origen surveys the plagues and notes which ones Scripture says Pharaoh's heart was hardened and which say the Lord hardened it.
14. 4.2Origen will not treat as chance the varying accounts of who hardened Pharaoh's heart, and follows Paul's reticence in not committing the solution of the question to writing.
15. 4.3Some plagues are brought on Egypt through Aaron, some through Moses, and some by the Lord himself.
16. 4.4Origen traces how Moses' approach to Pharaoh changes from plague to plague and how Pharaoh, step by step, comes to confess his sin and let the people go.
17. 4.5Only the Spirit who worked the plagues can explain them, but Origen, following Paul's call to seek the prophetic gift, resolves to say what he can.
18. 4.6Moses is the law, the ten plagues the ten commandments, and the rod the cross of Christ; the first six plagues correct the errors of philosophers, poets, dialecticians, Cynics, idol-worshippers, and the vices of malice, pride, and anger.
19. 4.7The thunder, hail, and fire are God's teaching and correction, the locusts expose human disorder, the darkness the obscurity of providence, and the death of the firstborn the overthrow of hostile powers or of the founders of false religions.
20. 4.8Morally, the plagues are the stages by which the law of God purges a soul living in Egypt, ending with the destruction of its first sinful impulses, unless it persists in unbelief.
21. 4.9As Moses first met Pharaoh at the water, so in disputation one should first refute the pagan philosophers before going further, and should not be fooled when the devil feigns defeat and asks us not to go far.
22. 5.1Paul's reading of the crossing of the sea, the cloud, the manna, and the rock as baptism, the Spirit, spiritual food, and Christ gives the Church a rule for understanding the law spiritually.
23. 5.2The stages of the exodus, Ramesses, Succoth, and Etham, mark the soul's leaving worldly treasure, living as a pilgrim in tents, and receiving in baptism the mystery of the third day.
24. 5.3The way between Epauleum and Magdalum, the winding ascent and the tower, shows the hardship of virtue and faith, and on that road the soul comes to the sea of temptations.
25. 5.4God protects those who follow his law: the pillar of cloud stands between them and the pursuing Egyptians, and the faithful are taught not to doubt but to cry to God in the heart.
26. 5.5The parting of the sea, divided, by an old tradition, into a path for each tribe, figures baptism, in which the believer escapes the pursuing powers, and also the victory of one who disputes with the rod of the law.
27. 6.1The first song of Scripture is sung after victory with a timbrel, the crucified flesh, and “gloriously honoured” points to Christ, glorified humbly in his incarnation and cross but gloriously at his second coming.
28. 6.2Persecutors are horses ridden by demons, as Judas was once ridden by the Lord and then by Satan; “the God of my father” is the God of Christ, who calls the Father his God to safeguard the oneness of God.
29. 6.3Pharaoh's chariots are the worst sinners, driven by the devil, and the “captains of three” are demons who watch the threefold way of sin in deed, word, and thought.
30. 6.4The wicked sink like stone and lead into the deep, while the saints walk on the water; all must pass through the refining fire, which burns away the lead of sin and leaves the gold of good works.
31. 6.5No one called “god” by grace is like God, for none but the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit is invisible, incorporeal, unchangeable, without beginning or end, and Creator of all.
32. 6.6The earth still swallows the earthly-minded, as it swallowed those who cried “Crucify him,” yet one who is swallowed can be cast up again like Jonah, and Christ descended to lead us out of the depths.
33. 6.7The Lord leads in righteousness the people he freed through the washing of regeneration, and comforts it with the hope of rest.
34. 6.8The nations that heard and trembled are the hostile powers, seized with fear when Christ despoiled them on the cross.
35. 6.9“Let them become like a stone” refutes those who teach evil natures or a cruel Creator, and foretells a temporary hardening of Israel until the Gentiles come in; Christ redeemed with his blood those whom the devil had bought with the coin of sin.
36. 6.10God plants his people not in the lowlands of Egypt but on the mountain of his inheritance, training his vine on the cedars of God, the prophets and apostles.
37. 6.11God leads his people into a dwelling already prepared, so that they enter into the labours of others.
38. 6.12The sanctuary prepared by God's hands is best understood of the flesh of Christ, formed in the virgin without human work, the stone cut without hands.
39. 6.13“And beyond” shows that God's reign extends past every age, however long.
40. 6.14As Israel walked dry through the sea, one who follows Christ can pass through a sinful world untouched by the waves of lust and greed.
41. 7.1The bitter water of Marah is the law taken literally (circumcision, sacrifices, the Sabbath), and the tree that sweetens it is Christ, the tree of life, who opens its spiritual sense.
42. 7.2The commandments were given to test a murmuring people and bring death to those who do not keep them, but, sweetened by the cross and understood spiritually, they are commandments of life that free us from the “Egyptian sicknesses” of worldliness, astrology, and pleasure.
43. 7.3The order of the journey, Marah before Elim, is the order of faith: from the letter of the law, sweetened by the cross, to the twelve springs of the apostles and the seventy palms of the seventy disciples.
44. 7.4The murmuring on the fifteenth day of the second month, the date of the second Passover, points to the Gentiles' Passover, to which the true bread from heaven came; murmuring against God is pardoned in beginners but punished in those who persist.
45. 7.5Since the manna began on the first day and ceased on the Sabbath, the Lord's Day was already preferred to the Sabbath; the manna is the word of God, minute and spiritual, and the double portion of the sixth day is the good works we store up in this life for the age to come.
46. 7.6Manna hoarded by the unbelieving breeds worms, as the word of God becomes a gnawing worm in the conscience of one who sins after receiving it.
47. 7.7The Lord known “in the evening” and his majesty seen “in the morning” point to Christ's passion and to the resurrection announced at dawn.
48. 7.8Meat in the evening is the flesh of the Word, who came at the evening of the world, and bread in the morning is the word given to believers after the resurrection; the manna of the word gives each believer the taste he needs but becomes a worm to the unfaithful.
49. 8.1“I brought you out of the house of slavery” is spoken to every soul that leaves the world, but only one who has passed through the stages of the journey to Sinai is fit to hear the commandments of freedom.
50. 8.2Origen counts “no other gods” and “no idol” as two commandments; “you shall have no other gods” does not deny that beings called gods exist (the angels set over the nations) but forbids them to God's people, who are Israel in spirit.
51. 8.3An idol is the image of something that does not exist, a likeness the image of something real; the commandment forbids both, including the hidden images of demons.
52. 8.4Serving and worshipping differ and both are forbidden; at baptism we renounce all other gods, and a soul that returns to Christ, its lawful husband, must keep wholly faithful lest the unclean spirit return.
53. 8.5God's jealousy is that of a lawful husband who will not let the soul joined to him in baptism consort with demons; while he reproves and chastises there is hope, but when he stops being jealous the sinner is abandoned.
54. 8.6Against heretics who reject a God who punishes children for their fathers' sins, Origen reads the “fathers” as the devil and his angels and the “children” as those they beget through sin, whom God chastises in this life so that they may be purified for the age to come.
55. 9.1Only one who has passed spiritually through the whole exodus can understand the tabernacle; Paul, in Hebrews, opens a little of its meaning, reading the veil as Christ's flesh and the holies as heaven.
56. 9.2David's longing for the “wonderful tabernacle,” the wickedness of priests who served in the earthly one, and Christ's “eternal tabernacles” show that the tabernacle of Exodus is a figure of heavenly things.
57. 9.3The tabernacle built from the people's free gifts figures the Church: its silvered pillars are the teachers, their bases the prophets, their capital Christ, the curtains the faithful hanging on the threefold cord of faith in the Trinity, and its materials the virtues.
58. 9.4Each believer can build the tabernacle within himself, with silver pillars of patience, an inner altar for sacrificing pride, anger, and lust, a lampstand of watchfulness, and a ruling mind that serves as high priest.
59. 10.1Origen introduces the law of the struck pregnant woman (Exod 21:22–25) as one of the “ordinances” and asks whether Christ's “eye for eye” in Matthew cites this passage or the law of the false witness in Deuteronomy.
60. 10.2Taken literally, the law of the struck pregnant woman, like the law of the false witness in Deuteronomy, raises questions that cannot be settled, so both must be understood spiritually.
61. 10.3Spiritually, the quarrelling men are disputing teachers whose contention makes a newly believing soul miscarry the word before it is formed, and such a teacher suffers loss.
62. 10.4The loss is paid as the soul's teacher imposes it, but one who destroys a soul in which the word is already formed pays life for life; eye for eye and tooth for tooth are read spiritually.
63. 11.1The Christian, always under attack, must live as a soldier in God's camp; the journey from Sin (“temptation”) to Rephidim (“soundness of judgment”) is the passage of one tested and unwounded in temptation.
64. 11.2The people thirst for water when they should thirst for God; the rock struck by Moses is Christ, struck on the cross, from whom the springs of the New Testament flow, and the elders with Moses are the prophets and patriarchs who also announce Christ.
65. 11.3Amalek's attack after the gift of water from the rock shows that temptations follow grace, and Moses calling “Jesus” to choose mighty men figures the law calling Christ, who alone chooses his soldiers.
66. 11.4Moses on the hilltop with raised hands figures the law understood on high and prayer lifted to God, by which the people from the Gentiles conquers, while the people that keeps Moses' hands on the earth is defeated.
67. 11.5Jethro comes to Moses with his family; only proven athletes can go down into Egypt and grow there, as Abraham and Jacob did, unlike Jeroboam, and sinning before God's face differs from leaving his presence.
68. 11.6Moses' acceptance of Jethro's advice to appoint leaders teaches church leaders humility and foreshadows the Gentiles bringing the spiritual sense to the law, which by its letter brings nothing to perfection.
69. 11.7Before hearing the word of God, like Israel at Sinai, hearers must sanctify themselves and wash their garments, abstaining for a time even from what is lawful.
70. 12.1Moses' veiled, glorified face figures the hidden glory of the law, whose veil, Paul says, is taken away only when one turns to the Lord.
71. 12.2To turn to the Lord is to leave worldly cares and give the word of God the undivided attention parents give their children's schooling; those who leave as soon as the readings end have not even reached the veil.
72. 12.3In the law only Moses' face is glorified, while his hand is leprous and his feet unshod, but at the transfiguration he appears wholly in glory beside Christ, of whom he had said, “You shall hear him.”
73. 12.4“The Lord is the Spirit” calls hearers to turn to the Word as spirit, so that the veil over the law is taken away, and true freedom comes only from the Son.
74. 13.1Introducing the offering for the tabernacle (Exod 35:4–10), Origen hesitates to cast pearls before inattentive hearers but, as a servant entrusted with his Lord's money, undertakes to explain it, urging his hearers to repay it with the interest of a changed life.
75. 13.2The materials are to be offered “from yourselves”: the gold of a believing heart, the silver of confession, and the bronze of voice, the gift of tongues and interpretation.
76. 13.3Each believer should offer for the tabernacle what he has conceived in his heart, guarding the word of God as carefully as the eucharistic body; the four colours of the offerings figure the four elements.
77. 13.4Only the scarlet, figure of fire, is called double, because fire both illuminates and burns, as a teacher must both enlighten and reprove.
78. 13.5The twisted linen is the flesh disciplined by abstinence, the goats' hair dead sin, the rams' skins dead fury; the wives' jewellery offered by the men is the obedient flesh's hearing, good works, and discernment, unlike the earrings given for the golden calf.
79. 13.6The incorruptible wood, found only “with whom it was found,” is the rare gift of virginity, unlike understanding, speech, and the four elements, which all have.
80. 13.7The princes' gifts, the breastpiece joined to the shoulder piece, oil, and incense, show that those who preside must join teaching to deeds and shine for all, and every believer must work wisely what he has received to build a tabernacle for God.