Origen's homily reading Jeremiah's oracle against Jerusalem ('Who will spare you?') as both a historical verdict on the city and an allegory of the sinning soul.
Homily on Jeremiah 13 is one of Origen's surviving sermons on the book of Jeremiah, preached to a congregation and built around a single dense oracle: "Who will spare you, Jerusalem? Or who will be downcast over you? Or who will turn aside to ask about your peace?" Origen begins on the literal level, picturing Jerusalem as a condemned criminal whom even the angels dare not pity, because pitying one condemned by God would seem to defy the King who condemned him. He then identifies this abandoned Jerusalem with the historical city that rejected and killed Jesus, quoting Jesus' own lament over Jerusalem ("who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her") and Hebrews' warning about those who "crucify the Son of God afresh."
Having established the historical reading, Origen pivots to his signature allegorical move: Jerusalem is also every believing soul. He etymologizes the city's older name, Jebus, as "Trodden Down," and Jerusalem itself as "Vision of Peace," arguing that a soul which has advanced from being trampled by hostile powers to seeing peace can still relapse into the condemned state described in the oracle - if it tramples the Son of God underfoot and treats the blood of the covenant as common. The sermon's rhetorical center is the danger of apostasy after enlightenment, quoted almost verbatim from Hebrews 6, and the peril of "going backward" instead of "reaching forward to the things ahead" (Philippians 3).
Origen closes with an extended reading of Lot's escape from Sodom - "do not look back, nor stand anywhere in the surrounding country" - as a two-stage moral program: first leaving sin behind, then not lingering nearby, and finally reaching the mountain, which he identifies as Christ himself. The homily is a compact example of Origen's method: a difficult prophetic verse is worked simultaneously as national history, ethical warning, and allegory of the soul's ascent, stitched together with catchword links across Jeremiah, the Gospels, Hebrews, and Genesis.
“Who will spare you, Jerusalem? Or who will be downcast over you? Or who will turn aside to ask about your peace?”
— Homily on Jeremiah 13 · read this chapter →
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a bird gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 13 · read this chapter →
“those who were once enlightened, and tasted the heavenly gift, and became partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away”
— Homily on Jeremiah 13 · read this chapter →
“The righteous man reaches forward to the things ahead; clearly the one disposed contrary to the righteous man calls to mind the things behind and does not reach forward to the things ahead.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 13 · read this chapter →
“Do not look back, nor stand anywhere in the surrounding country; escape to the mountain, lest you be swept away with them”
— Homily on Jeremiah 13 · read this chapter →
It is a sermon on Jeremiah's oracle 'Who will spare you, Jerusalem?' Origen first reads it as God abandoning the historical city for rejecting Christ, then reinterprets Jerusalem allegorically as any soul that advances toward peace and then falls back into sin.
He notes that Jerusalem's earlier name was Jebus, which he says the 'sons of the Hebrews' interpret as 'Trodden Down,' contrasted with Jerusalem meaning 'Vision of Peace.' This etymology lets him allegorize the soul's movement from being oppressed by hostile powers to attaining peace - and its danger of falling back.
He quotes its warning that those once enlightened who fall away cannot be renewed to repentance because they 'crucify the Son of God afresh for themselves,' using it to explain why Jeremiah's oracle says no one will intercede for the sinning soul, just as no one interceded for those the author of Hebrews describes.
Origen treats the angels' instructions to Lot - do not look back, do not linger in the surrounding country, escape to the mountain - as a stepwise moral discipline: leave sin decisively, do not remain near its former territory, and press on to Christ, whom he identifies directly as 'the mountain.'
Yes - he explicitly identifies the historical Jerusalem that 'turned away' as standing for 'all the Jews,' reading their rejection of Christ as the reason angels no longer intercede for the city; the homily also states their trespass caused Gentile salvation, citing Paul's language of provoking Israel to jealousy.
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