Origen's sermon on Jeremiah 3, reading Israel's and Judah's unfaithfulness as a warning to the church about its own capacity to fall away.
Homily on Jeremiah 4 is one of Origen's surviving sermons on the book of Jeremiah, delivered to a Christian congregation and built around a close reading of Jeremiah 3 (the oracle addressed to Josiah about the "faithless" sister-kingdoms Israel and Judah). Origen begins with a historical clarification: after the death of Solomon the kingdom split into the ten northern tribes (Israel, under Jeroboam) and the two southern tribes (Judah, under Rehoboam). Israel sinned first and was carried into Assyrian captivity; Judah, instead of learning from Israel's fate, sinned even worse and was later exiled to Babylon for seventy years, as Jeremiah and Daniel record.
Origen then reads this history typologically. Israel's rejection prefigures the calling of the Gentile nations into the church, while Judah's failure to learn from Israel's punishment becomes a warning to Christians not to presume on their own status. He works verse by verse through Jeremiah's image of God giving the unfaithful wife (Israel) a "bill of divorce" and of her sister Judah, who witnessed this and still "was not afraid," going on to commit her own adultery "with wood and stone." Origen applies the Pharisee-and-tax-collector parable and Paul's olive-tree image from Romans 11 to argue that the church, having replaced ethnic Israel as heir to the promises, faces exactly the same risk of being cut off if it does not turn back "with the whole heart."
The homily closes on a pastoral and somewhat elegiac note: Origen contrasts the faithful few of the martyr generation, disciplined by persecution, with the larger but laxer church of his own day, invoking Jesus's sayings that "many are called, but few are elect" and that love will grow cold as lawlessness increases. He ends with the hope, drawn from Paul, that once "the fullness of the nations" is saved, Israel too will ultimately be restored, so that Jew and Gentile become "one flock, one shepherd."
“as it is written in Kingdoms, the people was divided in the days of Rehoboam into the kingdom of the ten tribes under Jeroboam”
— Homily on Jeremiah 4 · read this chapter →
“the many sins of that people caused it to be abandoned, and us to come to the hope of the covenants, the heirs of the covenants, we who were strangers to the promises”
— Homily on Jeremiah 4 · read this chapter →
“if he did not spare the natural branches, how much more will he not spare”
— Homily on Jeremiah 4 · read this chapter →
“many are called, but few are elect”
— Homily on Jeremiah 4 · read this chapter →
“if the fullness of the nations enters in, then all Israel will be saved, "and they will become one flock, one shepherd,"”
— Homily on Jeremiah 4 · read this chapter →
It is a sermon expounding Jeremiah 3, where God addresses the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah as two unfaithful sisters. Origen reads the historical exile of Israel and Judah as a figure for the church's own risk of falling away if it does not learn from that history.
He treats Israel's earlier sin and exile as a type of the Jewish people's rejection and the calling of the Gentiles, while Judah's failure to be warned by Israel's punishment becomes a caution to Gentile Christians not to presume on their new status.
He recalls a past generation, disciplined by persecution and 'noble martyrdoms,' as truly faithful and few, contrasting them with the larger but less committed church of his own time, citing Jesus's warning that love will grow cold as lawlessness increases.
Yes. Drawing on Paul, he ends the homily with the hope that once 'the fullness of the nations' is saved, Israel will also be restored, so that Jews and Gentiles become one flock under one shepherd.
It is Jeremiah's image for God formally casting off unfaithful Israel; Origen uses it to warn that the church, like Judah in the text, could likewise receive such a certificate of divorce if it sins without turning back wholeheartedly.
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