Origen reads Jeremiah's graduated curses (Lev. 26) as proof God punishes 'little and little,' then allegorizes exile as the soul's estrangement from God this side of Christ.
This homily opens from a legal-sounding text in Jeremiah about staged national punishments, echoing the escalating curses of Leviticus 26 ("I will add seven more plagues upon you"). Origen's first move is theological: God does not punish sin all at once but in measured stages, giving room for repentance, so that even the harshest punishments described for Israel are pedagogical rather than final. He extends this into a doctrine of graded punishment for individual souls too - some are struck once, some up to seven times - reading the seven plagues as a cipher for a hierarchy of chastisement matched to the seriousness of each person's sin.
He then turns to the historical question of when Israel's punishment was actually completed, rejecting the destruction under Nebuchadnezzar and even the Maccabean crisis as the true endpoint, and locating completion instead in Christ's lament over Jerusalem ("Behold, your house is left to you desolate"). From there the homily pivots to its real interest: allegorizing exile. Being sent to "a land that is not your own" for serving other gods becomes, in Origen's tropological reading, a moral diagnosis available to any Christian - whoever deifies food, drink, or money ("your god is the belly," "your god is mammon") has already left the church into a foreign land, whether or not they have physically moved.
The homily closes with a striking reversal: Israel sinned by worshiping foreign gods in the holy land, but Christians now live in a genuinely foreign land - under "the ruler of this age" - and must instead worship the true God, who is himself foreign to that regime of sin. Origen finds the answer to the psalm's question ("How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?") in the incarnation: Christ took on "the body of sin" so that believers could worship God even in exile, anticipating a future return to the true holy land.
“he punishes. And an example of this is in Leviticus”
— Homily on Jeremiah 7 · read this chapter →
“who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings”
— Homily on Jeremiah 7 · read this chapter →
“other gods. Do you deify foods and drinks? Your god is”
— Homily on Jeremiah 7 · read this chapter →
“he came to this place bearing the body that saves, taking up”
— Homily on Jeremiah 7 · read this chapter →
It is an exposition of a passage in Jeremiah describing graduated punishment for Israel's sins, which Origen connects to the escalating curses of Leviticus 26. He uses it to argue that God punishes sinners in stages, not all at once, and then allegorizes national exile as a picture of the soul's estrangement from God through idolizing things like money or food.
He reads the graduated plagues of Leviticus 26 ("I will add seven more plagues upon you") as evidence that God deliberately withholds full punishment, giving sinners repeated opportunities to turn back before completion of judgment arrives.
He rejects the destruction under Nebuchadnezzar and the Maccabean period as the true completion, arguing instead that it came only with Christ's lament over Jerusalem, when he said 'Behold, your house is left to you desolate.'
In this homily he treats the Old Testament charge of serving foreign gods as a moral diagnosis: anyone who prizes food, drink, or wealth above God has effectively deified that thing, and is thereby cast out of the church into a spiritual 'foreign land,' regardless of physical location.
He reverses the biblical picture: Israel sinned by worshiping foreign gods while in their own holy land, but Christians now live in a land genuinely foreign to God, ruled by 'the ruler of this age.' The incarnation, where Christ takes on 'the body of sin,' is presented as the means by which believers can still worship God while in that exile.
He draws heavily on Leviticus 26's curse formulas, Jeremiah's oracle about Israel's punishment and exile, Jesus's lament over Jerusalem in the Gospels, Jesus's saying about serving God and mammon, and psalm language about singing the Lord's song in a foreign land.
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