Origen allegorizes Jeremiah 16's fishers-and-hunters oracle as stages of Christian conversion, then wrestles with whether sinners repay wrongs before or after receiving reward.
Homily on Jeremiah 16 is one of Origen's surviving sermons on the prophet, delivered to a congregation and preserved (in part via later translation) alongside the rest of his Jeremiah cycle. Origen takes as his starting point Jeremiah's prophecy that God will send "many fishers" and afterward "many hunters" who will hunt "from every mountain and from every hill," and reads it as an allegorical map of the whole Christian life: the apostles as fishers of men who pull souls up out of the "sea" of worldly sin, and a further company of hunters who then pursue the transformed souls into the heights - the mountains of the prophets, the hills of the righteous, and the rocky clefts where God can be glimpsed, as Moses glimpsed him in the cleft of the rock.
From this image Origen builds an extended chain of typology: the transfiguration and the Sermon on the Mount as mountains where Jesus teaches; the burning bush and Moses' vision of God's "back" as a model for how every rock (prophet, apostle, or angel) has a "cleft" through which God is partially seen; and the parable of the rich fool as a warning against remaining in the low valleys of earthly goods. The homily's central argumentative crux is Jeremiah's statement that God will "repay first double their iniquities" - Origen defends the wording "first," found in other Greek editions but missing from the Septuagint text he had, and uses it to argue that even believers who have done good must first answer for remaining sin before receiving reward, appealing to Paul's "saved, yet so as through fire."
The homily closes with a distinctly text-critical excursus: Origen notes a verse on the sin of Judah "written with an iron stylus, engraved with a diamond point upon the tablet of their heart" that he says is absent from the Seventy (Septuagint) but present in "the remaining editions" and in the Hebrew - a rare moment where Origen names his own comparative textual method (the same method behind his Hexapla) inside a live sermon, before turning the verse into a meditation on sin's ineffaceable imprint on the conscience and the coming judgment that will expose it.
“Behold, I send many fishers, says the Lord, and they will fish for them; and after these things I will send many hunters, and they will hunt them upon every mountain and”
— Homily on Jeremiah 16 · read this chapter →
“in a hole of the rock, and you shall observe my back; but my face shall not be seen by you.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 16 · read this chapter →
“The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus, engraved with a diamond point upon the tablet of their heart.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 16 · read this chapter →
“our fathers acquired false idols, and there is no benefit in them.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 16 · read this chapter →
“Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, and nothing covered that will not be uncovered.”
— Homily on Jeremiah 16 · read this chapter →
It is a sermon on Jeremiah's oracle about God sending 'many fishers' and then 'many hunters' to gather people. Origen allegorizes this as the two stages of Christian life: the apostles as fishers who pull souls out of the sea of sin, and hunters who then pursue transformed souls up into the mountains, hills, and rocky clefts of holiness.
The fishers are the apostles (echoing Jesus calling Simon, Andrew, James, and John as fishers of men), who bring souls up from the sea of the world. The hunters then pursue those same souls once they have left the sea and taken up residence on the mountains (the prophets) and hills (the righteous), catching them 'from every mountain and hill and from the clefts of the rocks.'
Origen reads Exodus's account of Moses hidden in the cleft of the rock while God's glory passes as a figure for indirect vision of God. He identifies the rock itself as Christ and argues every prophet, apostle, or angel likewise has a 'cleft' or 'hole' through which something of God can be glimpsed, though never fully seen.
Yes. He notes that a verse describing the sin of Judah 'written with an iron stylus' is missing from the Seventy (Septuagint) as he knew it but present in 'the remaining editions' and the Hebrew, and he chooses to preach on it anyway - a direct glimpse of the comparative textual work underlying his Hexapla.
Commenting on Jeremiah's promise to 'repay first double their iniquities,' Origen argues believers must first answer for lingering sin before receiving reward for good deeds, since God 'does not repay in the reverse order.' He connects this to Paul's image of a builder whose work is tested by fire, 'saved, yet so as through fire.'
Origen reads them as the world's foolish and base-born rather than its wise and well-born, who come to God confessing 'our fathers acquired false idols, and there is no benefit in them' - fulfilling Paul's statement that God chose 'the foolish things of the world' and 'the things held in contempt.'
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