Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek and Latin
God, judging by measure, gives room to those who are to be punished, and does not, punishing immediately upon the sin, bring the full completion of the punishment upon the one who has sinned. For this reason, ‘judging by little and little,’ he punishes. And an example of this is in Leviticus; for among the curses against those who transgress the law it is written, after the earlier punishments: ‘And it shall be, if after’
these things you do not turn back, says the Lord, I will add seven more plagues upon you.’ And again he relates another punishment: ‘And it shall be, if after these things you do not turn back, but walk contrary to me, I also will walk with you in wrathful contrariness.’ And you will find God measuring out punishments with sparing, since he wishes to bring the one who has sinned to conversion, and does not render all the punishments at once. Such things, then,
had happened concerning the people, so far as the letter goes, and the word, threatening them with what they would suffer after those things, says: ‘And it shall be in those days, says the Lord your God, that I will not strike you to complete destruction.’ But if these things reach their fullest extent even in the punishments still to come — unless, indeed, the one who is able should pass over from the things that happened in
life concerning the people to those punishments as well; for I, persuaded, would say that just as ‘a pattern and shadow of heavenly things is what they serve,’ so by a pattern and shadow of the true punishments that people was punished for their own sins, so that every punishment set out concerning the people according to the law and the prophets contains a shadow of true punishments.
If, then, for those people no completion came upon their sins, but only at some end — nor will there ever be, even after their departure, a punishment upon those who have sinned — there is a completion upon Jerusalem, at the time of the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar. And yet someone will say that not even then was there completion, nor indeed at the time of the Maccabees. Rather, completion for the people came at the coming of my Lord
Jesus Christ. For as long as the Savior did not say to them, ‘Behold, your house is left to you,’ it was not left to them. But when he wept over Jerusalem, saying, ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 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, and
you were not willing? Behold, your house is left to you desolate’ — the house is left, Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, as though the house had been left, and ‘her desolation has drawn near.’ Then, after their transgression, salvation came to us. So then those people were being punished, and completion did not overtake them until the coming of my Lord Jesus. But I am considering whether
such things hold also concerning us, and certain punishments occur, such that some have no experience of second punishments but are content with the first, while others come even to the second, but not indeed to the third, and others will come even to the fourth. For ‘I will add seven plagues’ signifies some mystery, one occurring after another, and a second, and
third, up to the seven blows mentioned, upon certain people. But not all are struck with seven blows; rather, I think some will be struck with six blows, others five, others four, others three <or> two, and I think those who are most inferior of all in their punishments will be struck with one blow. So God knows these things concerning the blows as well. That is why it is written here, at the beginning of the
reading: “And it shall be in those days”—the days concerning what has been said—“I will not bring about your complete destruction.” But it is not in those days that there is complete destruction; for there are certain days on which he will bring about complete destruction for those upon whom he will bring it. “And it shall be, when you say, Why has the Lord our God done all these evils to us? then you shall say to them: Because you abandoned
me and served other gods in your own land, so shall you serve in a land that is not your own.” Let the saying be understood, and for the present it is enough to set out the reminder for those able to hear it from the saying itself. The sons of Israel, then, had the holy land, the temple, the house of prayer. They ought to have served God. But transgressing the
divine commandments, they practiced idolatry and took over the idols of Damascus, as it is written in Kingdoms, and they took up other idols as well, in addition to those of the holy land. Because of the idols of the nations that they took over, they made themselves deserving of being cast down into the land of the idols, to come to dwell there, where they used to worship the idols. So the word says to them, according to the saying: “Because
you abandoned me and served other gods in your own land, so shall you serve other gods in a land that is not your own.” Everyone who makes something a god serves other gods. Do you deify foods and drinks? Your god is “the belly.” Do you honor silver as a great good, and wealth here below? Your god is mammon, and lord.
For Jesus called him lord of the lovers of silver when he said, “You cannot serve God and mammon; no one can serve two lords.” So then, whoever honors silver and admires wealth and thinks it a good thing, and welcomes the rich as gods while despising the poor as though they had no god of their own—this person deifies silver. If anyone
happens to be within the church of God and worships other gods by deifying things not worthy of being deified, he will be cast out into a foreign land, and let him worship the gods he worshiped once he was inside. Let the lover of money be outside, cast out of the church; let the glutton be outside the church, having become such. These things according to a single tropology, so that I not now busy myself with matters beyond me
and concerning the land about which the Savior said, “Who will give you what is ours?” and how, when worship has taken place in someone’s land, God has so arranged things that certain people are cast out from their own land and come upon the land about which it is written, “Hear, Israel. Why are you in the land of your enemies? You have been reckoned among those going down to Hades.”
You have forsaken the fountain of life, the Lord. If you had walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in peace for the length of an age. Now then we are in a foreign land, and we pray to do the opposite of what the sons of Israel did in the holy land. For they worshiped foreign things—foreign gods—in the holy land; but we, in
a foreign land, worship the God who is foreign to the land, foreign to the affairs upon the earth. For the ruler of this age rules here, and God is foreign to his sons. But when I say “foreign,” I do not mean this—not that he did not create the world, but that he is foreign to the dominion of wickedness, foreign to the sins now present. And yet, even wishing to
worship the God who is foreign to the affairs of sin, in this land of affliction—let us see what we are doing. We do not say, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon a foreign land?” But rather, how shall we sing the Lord’s song, not upon a foreign land? We seek this place for singing the Lord’s song, a place for worshiping the Lord our God upon a foreign land.
What then is this place? I have found it: he came to this place bearing the body that saves, taking up “the body of sin” “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” so that in this place, because of Christ Jesus who came to dwell among us and abolished the ruler of this age and abolished sin, I might be able to worship God here, and after this I will worship in
the holy land. For if someone who worshiped the idols in the holy land went away to the foreign land, then someone who worships God in the foreign land will go away to the holy land, in Christ Jesus, his the glory and the might forever. Amen.