Homilies on Jeremiah

Contents

Reading pages: 1.0–1.15 · 1.16–3.2 · 4.0–5.4 · 5.5–5.17 · 6.0–7.3 · 8.0–8.9 · 9.0–9.4 · 10.0–12.0 · 12.1–12.11 · 12.12–14.7 · 14.8–14.18 · 15.0–15.6 · 16.0–16.10 · 17.0–18.5 · 18.6–18.10 · 19.0–20.1 · 20.2–20.7 · 20.8

1. 1.0The title of the first homily: the beginning of Jeremiah's ministry and his call.
2. 1.1God is quick to do good and slow to punish, and always warns before he condemns, as with Nineveh and with Sodom.
3. 1.2The dates of Jeremiah's ministry look like mere history, but a careful reader asks what they teach.
4. 1.3God kept sending Jeremiah right up to the captivity so that people might still repent; so too sinners today are handed over to Satan, the spiritual Nebuchadnezzar.
5. 1.4Sin hands us over to spiritual captivity, but all of Scripture calls us to repent, and God promises to relent if we do.
6. 1.5Jeremiah received an exceptional word, said to no other prophet: God knew and sanctified him before birth.
7. 1.6Some apply Jeremiah's call to Christ, but parts fit Christ poorly and parts fit Jeremiah poorly; Origen refuses to split one passage between them.
8. 1.7The nations and kingdoms to be rooted out are sins ruling in souls; and with Scripture as witness, even “I am too young” can be applied to Christ, who emptied himself and grew as a child.
9. 1.8Christ, the Word of God, can truly say “I do not know how to speak,” because human speech is lower than the divine knowledge he has; like a grown man learning baby talk, he took up human speech in the incarnation.
10. 1.9In the Father the Word had no need of words that root out evil; “I do not know how to speak” means he did not speak human things, just as “I do not know you” marks his greatness.
11. 1.10Scripture distinguishes “making” (the soul after God's image) from “forming” (the body from dust); God “knows” only those worthy of his knowledge, and knew Jeremiah even before he was formed.
12. 1.11God sanctified Jeremiah before birth; the Savior was sanctified even earlier.
13. 1.12Jeremiah literally prophesied against the nations, but in the higher sense the Savior is the prophet to all nations foretold by Moses, still drawing people to salvation by his Spirit.
14. 1.13Jeremiah was young in body but mature within; God warned him of persecution, which all who live godly lives must expect, and which is blessed when suffered unjustly.
15. 1.14Unlike Isaiah, Jeremiah was touched by the Lord's own hand; the kingdoms and nations he roots out are sins in the soul, weeds sown by the devil, which God's words uproot.
16. 1.15God's words not only root out and pull down the devil's building in the soul but destroy what is removed, so that nothing is left for the evil one to rebuild or resow.
17. 1.16God's word first uproots and demolishes sin and then builds and plants, just as “I will kill and make alive” describes conversion, not cruelty, as the heretics claim.
18. 2.0The title of the second homily, on Jer 2:21–22.
19. 2.1God did not make death or evil; he planted every soul as a good vine in his image, and it is our own sin that turned it bitter and foreign.
20. 2.2The Word of God cleanses lighter sins like soap, but graver sins, like blood rather than dirt, need the spirit of burning.
21. 2.3Christ baptizes the holy with the Spirit, but sinners after baptism need the purifying fire; so we should live by Scripture and become pure before we die.
22. 3.0The title of the third homily, on Jer 2:31.
23. 3.1Origen asks why God says specially to Israel that he was not a wilderness to them, and proposes to distinguish God's universal and particular benefits.
24. 3.2God is never a wilderness to anyone in his universal gifts, but in particular favor he turned from Israel to the nations, to whom Christ is now fruitful.
25. 4.0The title of the fourth homily, on Jer 3:6–11.
26. 4.1Literally, the passage recalls how Israel, the northern kingdom, was exiled first for its sins, while Judah, instead of learning from it, sinned still worse.
27. 4.2Israel's rejection, like a wife given a bill of divorce, opened salvation to the nations; now the church, the new Judah, is in danger of sinning like Israel or worse.
28. 4.3In the age of the martyrs Christians were few but true; now the church is large but has few real believers, as Christ foretold for the end of the age.
29. 4.4Israel's fall should make us fear, since God is both kind and severe; the “high mountains” and “leafy trees” of Israel's idolatry are pride, like the Pharisee's, and the attractive but fruitless words of heretics.
30. 4.5Judah, and the church after her, should learn from Israel's rejection; like a newly bought slave who asks which servants were honored and which punished, we should read Scripture and imitate the righteous.
31. 4.6Judah turned back to God only half-heartedly; true conversion means reading the Old and New Testaments, imitating the righteous, and living by what we read.
32. 5.0The title of the fifth homily, on Jer 3:22–4:8.
33. 5.1As the apostles turned from the synagogue to the nations, so the prophet, after rebuking Israel, calls the Gentiles to return and be healed, though Paul confesses that Israel too was once foolish and disobedient.
34. 5.2The call “Return, you returning sons” is addressed to the Gentiles, who answer at once “We will be yours”; having said this, they must belong to God alone and to no passion or false god.
35. 5.3Converted Gentiles confess that the “mountains” (the gods of the nations) and the “hills” (deified heroes like Heracles and Asclepius) were a lie, and that their wonders were false signs, unlike those of Moses and Christ.
36. 5.4The Gentiles confess the falsehood of idols, and of Israel they say that its salvation will come through God after the fullness of the nations has come in; Origen hints at a still later salvation of all.
37. 5.5Shame for past sins is the beginning of good; those who boast of their immoralities cannot be freed from them until they are ashamed.
38. 5.6The “sheep” of the fathers are the soul's irrational impulses; Christ the good shepherd must dwell in the soul and shepherd them.
39. 5.7The fathers' oxen, sons, and daughters that shame consumes are the soul's wicked labors, thoughts, and deeds, which are destroyed when the sinner is ashamed of them.
40. 5.8The veil over the heart that keeps sinners from understanding Scripture is their own shame and dishonor; like Moses, we remove it ourselves when we turn to the Lord.
41. 5.9Passions such as anger are a veil over the soul's face; God does not hide his glory, but we hide it from ourselves until we put them away.
42. 5.10“We have sinned” is the confession of those who have stopped sinning; conversion takes time, like the healing of a wound.
43. 5.11To return fully to God one must first remove sinful speech from the mouth, then learn a knowing reverence before God's face.
44. 5.12An oath must be sworn in truth, with judgment, and in righteousness, not from habit; this is a stage on the way to Christ's command not to swear at all.
45. 5.13Teachers must prepare their hearers' souls before sowing the doctrines of the faith, and every believer must plough his own soul, removing the thorns of worldly care, before receiving the seed of Scripture.
46. 5.14Circumcision of the heart must be “to God”: philosophers and heretics discipline themselves by false teachings, but only the church's sound teaching removes the uncleanness we are born with.
47. 5.15The foreskin of the heart is the false opinions everyone forms in youth, which the Word must cut away; otherwise God's wrath burns like fire, fed by our wicked practices.
48. 5.16The trumpet is the Word that rouses us to spiritual war; we must flee into the walled city, the church, to escape the lion from the north, the devil, who hunts in the night.
49. 5.17The devil, a fallen lion, wants to lay waste the soul by false teachings; we must repent in sackcloth and shelter in the church, where God delivers us.
50. 6.0The title of the sixth homily, on Jer 5:3–5.
51. 6.1God's eyes rest on faith and on every virtue, as they turn from unbelief and vice; whoever acquires the virtues receives the light of God's face.
52. 6.2God's rebukes scourge the conscience; blessed are those who feel the pain, for insensibility is a sign of a deadened soul, and those who reject God's instruction waste all he has done for them.
53. 6.3Hardened sinners are shameless and do not receive rebuke because their souls are poor; we should pray for greatness of soul so that we can truly hear God's word.
54. 7.0The title of the seventh homily, on Jer 5:18–19.
55. 7.1God punishes little by little so that sinners may turn back; Israel's punishments are shadows of the true punishments to come, and the final end came on Jerusalem only after it rejected Christ.
56. 7.2Just as God added plagues step by step to Israel, sinners receive graded punishments, some more, some fewer, and the final end comes only at God's appointed day.
57. 7.3Israel, worshipping foreign gods in the holy land, was sent into exile; Christians who make gods of the belly or money will be cast out of the church, but those who worship God in this foreign world will go to the holy land.
58. 8.0The title of the eighth homily, on Jer 10:12–14.
59. 8.1God made the earth by strength, the world by wisdom, the heaven by understanding; the soul is an inhabited world when Father, Son, and Spirit dwell in it, and the fallen world is set upright by God's wisdom in Christ.
60. 8.2Christ is God's understanding, as he is God's wisdom, power, and righteousness, one subject with many aspects; the righteous who bear the heavenly image are themselves a heaven, and their good works lead them to heaven.
61. 8.3The clouds God brings up are the saints and prophets, like Moses and Isaiah, whose words fall like rain, withheld from souls unworthy of it.
62. 8.4God brings up his clouds, the saints, from the “end” of the earth, from those who make themselves last, like the apostles; lightning, which comes from clouds striking each other, is next explained.
63. 8.5Lightning comes when two “clouds,” saints like Moses and Joshua or Paul and Silvanus, speak together; the “winds” from God's treasuries are the gifts of the Spirit stored in Christ.
64. 8.6The many treasuries of God may be the different resting places of the ranks of the risen, all contained in the one treasure, Christ.
65. 8.7Even Paul's knowledge is foolishness compared with the perfect knowledge of heaven, just as Sodom's sins look like righteousness compared with Jerusalem's.
66. 8.8The wisdom Christ brought when he emptied himself is “the foolishness of God” compared with God's heavenly wisdom, yet it is wiser than all human wisdom.
67. 8.9God refutes worldly wisdom not with his full wisdom but with a little of his “foolishness,” the humble Gospel; Christ took on weakness and folly to lead us up to God's true wisdom and power.
68. 9.0The title of the ninth homily, on Jer 11:1–10.
69. 9.1The Word who came to Jeremiah is the same Christ who was incarnate, so the God of the law and the gospel is one; the “men of Judah” addressed are Christians, since Christ is the true Judah of Jacob's blessing.
70. 9.2Jerusalem is the church; Christians, who believe Moses because they believe Christ, hear the covenant and have come out of the spiritual Egypt, while the people once called God's people were told “not my people.”
71. 9.3The church, born all at once from the Gentiles, is God's new people; God is the God only of the living, those who have turned from dead works, and the promised land is the one Christ promised to the meek.
72. 9.4Christians who sin return to their former father, the devil, for whoever sins is born of him; but as the Father always begets the Son, so God always begets the righteous as his sons in every good deed.
73. 10.0The title of the tenth homily, on Jer 11:18–12:9.
74. 10.1God alone is our teacher, through Christ, the Spirit, and the saints; in Jeremiah's “innocent lamb” Christ speaks, who “did not know” sin, since to know sin is to commit it.
75. 10.2The “wood put into his bread” is the cross added to Christ's teaching; far from spoiling it, the cross sweetened his word, like the wood that sweetened the bitter water, and spread it through the world.
76. 10.3Those who killed Christ hoped to blot out his name, but his death, like a grain of wheat, bore abundant fruit, and his resurrection will bear still more.
77. 10.4The men of Anathoth (“Hearkening”) who sought Jeremiah's life stand for those who rejected Christ; their punishment is a famine of God's word, as prophecy and true teaching passed from them to the church.
78. 10.5The heretics who blaspheme the Creator, like Marcion, Basilides, and Valentinus, seem to flourish and have many followers, but they name Jesus without having him; God's punishments are meant to purify.
79. 10.6The earth that mourns over human wickedness is the angel set over the earth, just as angels are set over water, air, fire, sun, moon, and stars, and they rejoice or mourn over our deeds.
80. 10.7In Jeremiah's lament Christ speaks: he left his heavenly home and inheritance and gave his soul into the hands of its enemies.
81. 10.8Christ's earthly inheritance turned against him like a lion and was handed to the “beasts,” the hostile powers; if we too neglect God's law we face the same, but repentance brings us under the care of holy angels.
82. 11.0The title of the eleventh homily, on Jer 12:11–13:11.
83. 11.1Christ is the one who says “because of me the land is laid waste,” since the desolation came after he was killed.
84. 11.2In a higher sense Christ lays waste the “earth” in us, the works of the flesh, by the sword of his teaching that separates flesh from spirit.
85. 11.3Belonging to the clergy (“the lot”) saves no one: many presbyters will perish and many lay people be saved; the higher one's office, the more is required, as Christ's parable of the steward shows.
86. 11.4Boasting in wealth, birth, fine clothes, or even wisdom is shameful; the only right boasting is Paul's, in the cross, in weakness, and in sufferings for Christ.
87. 11.5The linen loincloth that clung to the prophet is God's people, which rots when cast away for sin; the church from the nations is God's new loincloth, and like linen must be washed and whitened to cling to God.
88. 12.0The title of the twelfth homily, on Jer 13:12–17.
89. 12.1“Every wineskin will be filled with wine” is false literally, but true spiritually: every person is filled with wine, the good with the wine of Wisdom, the wicked with the wine of Sodom.
90. 12.2Every soul is a wineskin filled with wine: the wicked drink the unmixed cup of punishment, the mixed in character drink a cup mixed in proportion to their good and bad deeds, and the righteous drink Christ's cup of the new covenant.
91. 12.3God spares no sinner, not even priests; presbyters and deacons who sin will be punished, and sinners are scattered from one another as a discipline, while the blessed are gathered together.
92. 12.4God scatters the wicked also so that they cannot strengthen one another in evil, which is a kind of providence even for them.
93. 12.5Against heretics who call the Creator cruel, Origen compares God to a judge who does not pardon a murderer and a surgeon who must cut: punishment, including in church discipline, serves the good of the whole.
94. 12.6Sinners are punished also so that others may learn from it, as Proverbs says; so God's refusal to spare is an act of goodness.
95. 12.7“Hear” refers to receiving Scripture's hidden meanings into the mind, “give ear” to its plain lessons; and both must be followed by humility, since pride is a common sin even over good things.
96. 12.8People are proud of birth, power, or wealth, which is absurd, and even of wisdom, chastity, or suffering for Christ, which is plausible but still dangerous; Paul was given a thorn in the flesh so that he would not be proud of his revelations.
97. 12.9We must glorify God while Christ, the light, shines in us, before the darkness of sin falls.
98. 12.10The “darkness” in which no one can glorify God is the age of punishment after the end of the world; God's “little while” may be a whole age for us, as some sins are not forgiven in this age or the next.
99. 12.11We glorify God by virtuous deeds, not words; sinners dishonor him, and it is their wickedness that makes others doubt his providence.
100. 12.12The bright mountains are the angels and saints, the dark ones the devil and his powers; to “listen secretly” is to grasp the hidden spiritual sense of Scripture, which is why Christians who keep Jewish feasts and fasts literally are rebuked, and the church must fear being crushed as Israel was.
101. 13.0The title of the thirteenth homily, on Jer 15:5–7.
102. 13.1As no one dares pity someone condemned by the emperor, so the angels do not intercede for Jerusalem, condemned by God for killing Christ.
103. 13.2The soul that has become “Jerusalem” by conversion but then falls into grave sin or apostasy does to Christ spiritually what Jerusalem did to him bodily, and must fear that no one will intercede for it.
104. 13.3To “go backward” is to turn back to sin; like Lot, the believer must never look back or linger near Sodom, but press forward to the mountain, which is Christ.
105. 14.0The title of the fourteenth homily, on Jer 15:10–19.
106. 14.1Prophets and teachers are physicians of souls, and like physicians they are hated by patients who refuse painful treatment.
107. 14.2Jeremiah, a physician sent to a sick people, was constantly accused and dragged to court; hence his lament to his mother and his complaint that no one profited from his words.
108. 14.3Jer 15:10 has two readings, “I did not profit” (common in the churches) and “I did not owe” (in the most accurate copies, agreeing with the Hebrew); on the first reading, a teacher gains from hearers who make progress and ask questions, and Jeremiah had none.
109. 14.4On the reading “I did not owe,” the righteous owe no one anything because they give everyone their due; “no one owed me” means no one accepted Jeremiah's spiritual loan, which is itself a fault.
110. 14.5Unlike Isaiah, who prophesied after being cleansed of sin, Jeremiah was a prophet from birth; “mother” may be Wisdom, who bears the prophets; and “disputed with by all the earth” fits Christ better than Jeremiah.
111. 14.6Christ can say “woe is me,” as he wept over Jerusalem and as he laments in the prophets over the lack of fruit among men, but he says it as man, in his human soul, not as the divine Word.
112. 14.7Christ is “judged in all the earth” whenever Christians are tried or falsely accused for their faith, since he identifies himself with them.
113. 14.8Everyone who hears of Christianity puts Christ on trial: unbelievers condemn him, doubters dispute him, and believers welcome him; those who bear the heavenly image are no longer “earth” that judges him.
114. 14.9“My strength has failed” is Christ speaking: he was crucified in weakness, as Isaiah's suffering servant, having emptied himself to take the form of a servant.
115. 14.10Every rational person shares in Christ the Word; in sinners his strength fails, while in the righteous it grows, so that Jesus himself “advances” in them.
116. 14.11Christ interceded with the Father for sinners in the very time of their sins, dying for them while they were still sinners and rescuing them from the devil.
117. 14.12The “treasures” taken from Israel as plunder are the prophets and the true meaning of Scripture, now given to the church; by rejecting Christ, who is righteousness, wisdom, and truth, they lost them all.
118. 14.13The persecuted prophet, and Christ in him, asks God not to be long-suffering toward his persecutors; indeed only forty-two years passed from Christ's ministry to the fall of the temple, a short time allowed for repentance.
119. 14.14To pray for a share with the prophets and apostles is to ask to suffer as they did for rebuking sin; Origen alludes to a recent case of church discipline and warns his hearers not to listen to the slanders of the excommunicated.
120. 14.15The prophet's joy in God's word lies in the future, after suffering; like him, Christ refused to sit in the “council of players” and left it to form the church from the nations.
121. 14.16“I sat alone” describes a life so excellent that no one imitates it, which any believer, not only clergy, may aim at; such a life is filled with bitterness, the bitter herbs eaten with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
122. 14.17In this world the persecutors prevail, as the martyrs' trials show, because Christ's kingdom is not of this world.
123. 14.18The prophet's severe wound foreshadows the cross, followed by healing in the resurrection; God's promise “I will restore you” implies a return to where we once were, pointing to the restoration of all things.
124. 15.0The title of the fifteenth homily, on Jer 15:10–17:5.
125. 15.1Those who hope to share the prophets' blessedness should imitate their freedom and boldness in rebuking sin, as Jeremiah did.
126. 15.2Like the prophets, who were stoned and killed for rebuking the people, and like Christ, who denounced the scribes and Pharisees, we should be willing to be judged by many for speaking the truth.
127. 15.3“Judged in all the earth” fits Christ, who will stand before the Father at the judgment; his lament over the scanty harvest of virtue, found even in the churches, should make each of us examine our own fruit.
128. 15.4Christ laments over human sin as man, in his human soul, and the angels lament with him; the “mother” he addresses may be Mary, or, according to the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Holy Spirit.
129. 15.5Christ owed nothing, since he committed no sin, and “no one owed him” because he forgave all debts, like the lender in the parable who forgave both debtors, the Jewish people and the Gentiles.
130. 15.6“Cursed is he who hopes in man” condemns those who hold that Christ was a mere man; Christians hope in him as God's Wisdom and Word, and must not put their trust in bodily strength or influential friends.
131. 16.0The title of the sixteenth homily, on Jer 16:16–17:1.
132. 16.1The “fishermen” of Jeremiah are the apostles and teachers who draw souls out of the sea of this world by the net of Scripture; the converted soul, transformed, lives on the mountains, where God's “hunters” will later take it.
133. 16.2To be taken by God's hunters one must live on the “mountains,” like the mount of the Transfiguration and of the Beatitudes; the rock is Christ, and the cleft through which Moses saw God is Christ's coming in the flesh.
134. 16.3Christ's imitators, the prophets, apostles, and angels, become rocks too, each with a “cleft” through which God may be glimpsed in their words.
135. 16.4Moses saw God in the angel of the burning bush; those who stay on the “mountains” and lay up treasure in heaven, unlike the rich fool, will be taken to rest; they need not hide from God as Adam did, nor go out from his face like Cain.
136. 16.5The reading “I will repay first their sins double” (lost in the Septuagint but found in the other versions) shows that believers who sin after baptism must first receive the purifying consequences of their sins before the reward of their good works.
137. 16.6God, a consuming fire, burns away not the soul made in his image but the “wood, hay, and straw” built on it; so the punishment of sins comes first and then the reward, as God always kills before he makes alive.
138. 16.7Christians receive their sins back “double” because, like the servant who knew his master's will, they sin with knowledge of the truth.
139. 16.8The nations who come “from the end of the earth” renouncing their fathers' idols are the lowly and despised whom God chose, not the world's wise and powerful.
140. 16.9Men make gods not only of statues but of their own invented doctrines, like the founders of philosophical schools and heresies, who worship the works of their own minds; God reveals his power against them in Christ's coming.
141. 16.10Jeremiah's “sin of Judah engraved on the heart” (not in the Septuagint) applies to Christians who sin: sins leave an indelible imprint on the soul that will be laid bare at the judgment.
142. 17.0The title of the seventeenth homily, on Jer 17:11–16.
143. 17.1Natural history describes the partridge as deceitful and unclean, so the partridge of Jeremiah should be taken to mean the devil, not the Savior.
144. 17.2The partridge that gathers eggs it did not lay is the devil, who through heretics like Valentinus, Marcion, and Basilides gathers believers who belong to God.
145. 17.3Believers delivered by Christ from this evil age abandon the devil “in the middle of his days”; the devil, once “wise” like the serpent of Eden, will at the end be shown a fool.
146. 17.4At the end of time the devil's worldly wisdom will be shown to be folly; Christ is the exalted “throne of glory,” our sanctification and endurance, and whoever sins forsakes him, “written on the earth” instead of in heaven.
147. 17.5Only Christ, the physician of souls, can truly be asked “heal me and I shall be healed,” as the woman with the hemorrhage found; the one who renounces every earthly boast can say to God, “you are my boast.”
148. 17.6Following Christ takes away all weariness; and we should desire not the “day of man,” clinging to this life when sick, but the day of the resurrection.
149. 18.0The title of the eighteenth homily, on Jer 18:1–16.
150. 18.1The clay vessel that can be reshaped is the soul in this life, which can still be remade; the fired earthenware flask that cannot be mended is the soul after this life, when change is no longer possible.
151. 18.2Moses was told to go up the mountain, Jeremiah to go down to the potter's house: some teachings concern higher things, others lower things, and the mind that follows Christ, who both ascended and descended, can be led by the Word to all of them.
152. 18.3The vessel “fell” rather than being dropped because souls fall by their own free will: no one can snatch us from God's hand, but we can fall from it through neglect.
153. 18.4Scripture is a spring to simple readers and a well to deeper ones; some interpret the potter who remakes the fallen vessel as God raising our bodies in the resurrection.
154. 18.5The potter's word about two nations refers to Israel, threatened and punished for rejecting Christ, and to the church of the nations, planted on Christ, which will likewise be cut off if it bears no fruit.
155. 18.6Scripture's talk of God “repenting” or being angry is accommodation, like adults speaking baby talk to children: God neither changes his mind nor feels passion, but speaks so as to preserve our free will and correct us.
156. 18.7God “forms evils” against Judah like a potter shaping clay, so that by repenting they may make those evils fall from his hand and be remade as good.
157. 18.8Christians who return to their old sins after conversion say in deed what Judah said in word, “we will go after our turnings away”; the “horrible things” done by Israel are the killing of Christ, to whom the nations turned.
158. 18.9The three waters of the text, from the rock, from Lebanon, and driven by the wind, are Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit; Jews, heretics, and despisers of prophecy each fail to drink because they thirst for only one or two, and God never withdraws from us, but we from him.
159. 18.10The prayer of the righteous rises like incense to God, but the prayer of the wicked is incense “burned to vanity,” like Judas's prayer that became sin. [The rest of the homily is lost.]
160. 19.0The title of the nineteenth homily, on Jer 20:1–7; the beginning of the homily is lost.
161. 19.10Origen closes his (mostly lost) introduction by praying that Jesus will appear and teach the meaning of the passage read.
162. 19.11Origen retells the story of Pashhur the priest, who struck Jeremiah and put him in the stocks and was renamed “Emigrant,” doomed to exile; he confesses he needs Christ's light to explain its deeper meaning.
163. 19.12Pashhur struck the prophet as Ananias had Paul struck; today the Ebionites strike Paul with blasphemy, and Christ is still scourged and spat upon whenever his teaching is reviled by Jews, pagans, and unbelievers.
164. 19.13Pashhur threw Jeremiah down into a dungeon although there was an upper room in God's house; Scripture shows that saints receive prophets “upstairs,” and whoever keeps Christ's Passover must go up to the upper room, where Christ gives his body and blood.
165. 19.14Pashhur (“Blackness of mouth”) is the false interpreter who throws Scripture's prophetic words into a dungeon; sinners, even in the church, are handed over to the “king of Babylon,” the devil, who takes away all the labors and honor of those who fall after long struggle.
166. 19.15God “deceives” as adults deceive children for their good, threatening punishments to turn them, as with Nineveh; the law's punishments (stoning for adultery) suited Israel's infancy, while the Gospel threatens punishments beyond description for those who sin knowing the truth.
167. 20.0The title of the twentieth homily, on Jer 20:7–12.
168. 20.1God's anger, wrath, and repentance share only their names with ours: like his Word, which is unlike any human word, they are purposeful and corrective, as his “repentance” over Saul gave Israel David.
169. 20.2God's “deception” differs from ours; a Jewish convert told Origen that God, who persuades rather than compels, let Jeremiah think he would give the cup of wrath only to the nations, then told him to give it first to Jerusalem, as Isaiah too volunteered before learning his hard message.
170. 20.3Like a physician hiding the knife under a sponge, God conceals from the many the full truth that every sin will be purged by fire after death, so that they do not lose heart; such deception from God heals, unlike the serpent's.
171. 20.4A widow who stays unmarried because she wrongly fears that remarriage means damnation profits from the “deception”: remarriage is not damning, but remaining once-married is more blessed; so too the fear of eternal punishment keeps many from sin, while some who reject it grow worse.
172. 20.5According to Origen's Jewish teacher, Jeremiah, mocked whenever he said “Thus says the Lord,” began to say “Hear my words,” which is why the Hebrew book begins “The words of Jeremiah”; Christians likewise sometimes present Christian teaching without naming it to win prejudiced hearers.
173. 20.6Laughter is a promise for those who weep now, as Isaac's name shows; a preacher's bitter words, which move sinners to weep for their sins, end in the laughter of the blessed.
174. 20.7To “call on faithlessness” is to break our bad agreements with the world and the devil, as Judith broke her pact with Holofernes; to “call on misery” is to choose the narrow way of ascetic discipline, as those who renounce marriage do, and as Jeremiah lived unmarried.
175. 20.8Jeremiah's resolve to stop prophesying was a sin, at once burned away by God's word like fire in his heart; that inner fire of repentance, which Christ kindles, is better than any punishment, and the sinner who grieves long over his sin has hope, unlike the one who does not care.