Origen's sermon reading Jeremiah 15's 'Woe is me, mother' as a prophecy fulfilled in Christ's suffering and judgment.
Homily on Jeremiah 15 is one of Origen's surviving sermons on the book of Jeremiah, delivered to a congregation as a live exposition of a lectionary reading. Origen begins by describing the marks of a true prophet — freedom, vigor, watchfulness, willingness to reprove sinners regardless of cost — and lists the violent fates such prophets suffered (stoned, sawed in two, killed between the temple and the altar, thrown into a pit of mud), tying this pattern to Jesus's own rebukes of the scribes and Pharisees.
The homily's center is Jeremiah's cry ‘Woe is me, mother, for what a man you bore me, one to be judged and disputed with in all the earth!’ Origen argues the verse cannot be spoken by the prophet alone, since no prophet is truly disputed against by 'all the earth' — only Christ is. He walks through the verse twice, first applying it to Jeremiah, then to the Savior, and treats the 'mother' as ambiguous between the human soul, Mary, and the Holy Spirit (citing an extra-canonical saying about the Spirit carrying Jesus to Mount Tabor). He also addresses a textual problem directly: the phrase 'not even one owed me anything' is missing from most copies of the Septuagint text he is using, and he says that on checking 'the remaining editions' he judged its absence a scribal error — a rare moment of Origen doing visible textual criticism in the pulpit.
From there the sermon moves to the parable of the two debtors (owing five hundred and fifty denarii) as an allegory of Gentiles and Jews, and closes with an exposition of 'Cursed is the man who has his hope set on man,' read against those who deny Christ's divinity by saying 'the man was the Son of God' and nothing more, and against ordinary hearers who place their trust in powerful friends rather than in Christ.
“Woe is me, mother, for what a man you bore me, one to be judged and disputed with in all the earth!”
— Homily on Jeremiah 15 · read this chapter →
“One they stoned, another they sawed in two, another they killed”
— Homily on Jeremiah 15 · read this chapter →
“we must also know that most of the copies of the edition”
— Homily on Jeremiah 15 · read this chapter →
“A certain moneylender had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 15 · read this chapter →
“Cursed is the man who has his hope set on man.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 15 · read this chapter →
It is a sermon on Jeremiah's lament 'Woe is me, mother, for what a man you bore me, one to be judged and disputed with in all the earth,' which Origen reads as speaking of both Jeremiah's own persecution and, more fully, of Christ's judgment before the world. It also covers the parable of the two debtors and the warning 'Cursed is the man who has his hope set on man.'
Origen treats it as ambiguous: it could mean the soul that bore the prophetic or messianic figure, or Mary, or, citing an extra-canonical saying, the Holy Spirit who is said to have carried Jesus up to Mount Tabor.
Yes. In this homily he notes that most manuscript copies of the Septuagint he is reading from omit the phrase 'not even one owed me anything,' and says that after checking other editions he concluded the omission was a scribal error.
He allegorizes the debtor owing five hundred denarii as the Gentiles and the one owing fifty as the Jews, framing both peoples as forgiven debts of unbelief through Christ.
Expounding 'Cursed is the man who has his hope set on man,' he warns against trusting in friends with status or wealth (a centurion, a procurator, a rich patron) rather than in Christ, and also applies the verse against those who deny Christ's divinity.
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