Commentary on Psalms 1–25 Fragment from Preface

DOI: 10.4324/9780203011997-5

Introduction

Written in the early 220s, this is one of our earliest examples of Origen’s writing. It is an excerpt from the preface to Origen’s first, Alexandrian, Psalm commentary which the editors of the Philocalia chose to illustrate Origen’s hermeneutic principles. It recounts the “very beautiful tradition” concerning biblical interpretation provided by a Jewish informant and, in section 4, posits an analogy between God’s selfrevelation in Scripture and in the natural world. This analogy establisheswhat Charles Bigg called a “sacramental mystery of nature” that is the foundation of Origen’s approach to biblical symbolism.

The translation is from Origène, Philocalie, 1–20 et Lettre à Africanus, ed. Marguerite Harl and Nicholas de Lange = SC 302, Paris, Cerf, 1983, pp. 240–4.

Text

The divine discourses say that the divine Scriptures are locked and sealed by the key of David and also, indeed, by that seal of which it is said: “The imprint of a seal, a holy thing to the Lord” (Ex. 28:36), that is, locked and sealed by the power of the Lord who gave them. John teaches that they are locked and sealed in Revelation, saying:

And to the angel of the church at Philadelphia, write: “Thus says the one who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens, ‘I know your works, see, I have furnished before you an open door, which no one can close’ ”

(Rev. 3:7–8)

and a little later:

And I saw to the right of him who sat upon the throne a book written inside and out, sealed by seven seals. And I saw another mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice: “Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?” And no one in heaven, on earth or under the earth could open the book and see it, and one of the elders said to me, “Do not grieve, see, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed so as to open the book and its seven seals.”

(Rev. 5:1–5)

Isaiah writes, concerning sealing only:

And all these words will be to you like the discourses of this sealed book. If one should give it to a man who knows letters saying “Read this” he will say “I cannot read it, for it is sealed,” and should you give it into the hands of a man who does not know letters and say to him “Read this” he will say “I do not know letters.”

(Isa. 29:11–12).

These things must be considered to be said, not just of the Revelation to John and of Isaiah, but of all divine Scripture. For it is unanimously agreed by all who even moderately understand the divine discourses that they are filled with riddles, parables, dark sayings, and various other forms of obscurity hard for human nature to comprehend. This is just what the Savior intended to teach when he said – on the assumption that the key was in the possession of scribes and Pharisees who were making no effort to find a way to open the Scriptures – “Woe to you, lawyers, because you have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves do not enter, and you do not allow those coming to enter” (Lk. 11:52).

As we are about to begin the interpretation of the Psalms, we shall disclose a very beautiful tradition handed on to us by the Hebrew which applies generally to the entire divine Scripture. For the Hebrew said that the whole divinely inspired Scripture may be likened, because of its obscurity, to many locked rooms in one house. By each room is placed a key, but not the one that corresponds to it, so that the keys are scattered about beside the rooms, none of them matching the room by which it is placed. It is a difficult task to find the keys and match them to the rooms that they can open. We therefore know the Scriptures that are obscure only by taking the points of departure for understanding them from another place because they have their interpretative principle scattered among them. In any event, I think that the Apostle suggests a similar approach to understanding the divine discourses when he says: “And those things we speak are not in discourses instructed by human wisdom, but in ones instructed by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things by means of spiritual things” (1 Cor. 2:13).

* * *

But if “the oracles of the Lord are undefiled, refined silver, unadulterated with earth, purified seven times” (Ps. 11:7 [12:6]) and if the Holy Spirit has prompted them with deliberate precision through the servants of the Word (see Lk. 1:2), we must not miss the analogy, since the wisdom of God has permeated the whole of Scripture even to the individual letter. This is indeed why the Savior said: “Not one iota or one stroke will pass away from the law, until everything comes to be” (Mt. 5:18). For just as the divine skill in the fabrication of the world appears not only in sky, sun, moon, and stars – all of these being bodies through which it courses – but it has acted on earth in the same way even in the meanest material object, since even the bodies of the tiniest creatures are not despised by the Artisan, and even less the souls present in them, each of which receives in itself a particular property, a saving principle in an irrational being. Nor does the Artisan despise the earth’s plants, since he is present in each of them with respect to their roots, leaves, possible fruits, and different qualities. So with regard to everything recorded by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit we accept that, since divine providence has endowed the human race with a superhuman wisdom by means of the Scriptures, he has, so to speak, sowed traces of wisdom as saving oracles, in so far as possible, in each letter.

One must by all means be persuaded, once one has accepted that these Scriptures are the work of the world’s Creator, that those who investigate the Scriptures will confront issues as serious as do those who investigate the rational principle of creation. Indeed, even in Creation there exist some problems which human nature finds it hard or impossible to resolve, but the Creator of the Universe is not to be blamed on this account; for example, we do not ascertain the cause of the creation of basilisks or other venomous beasts. In the case of someone who perceives the weakness of our race and that it is impossible for us to comprehend the rational principles of God’s skill even when they have been contemplated with very precise attention, the reverent procedure is to refer the knowledge of these matters to God, so that later, if we are deemed worthy, the things to which we piously pay attention may be revealed to us. Similarly, in the divine Scriptures one must see that there are many problems hard for us to resolve. As for those who, having abandoned the Creator, presume to take refuge in a God whom they have invented, let them resolve the difficulties that we have just presented. After such audacious impiety, let them persuade their conscience to be at peace with their proposals concerning the matters just investigated and the difficulties we have just raised. But if the difficulties remain no less intractable, once they have separated themselves from the godhead, would it not be more pious for them to stay with the common understanding of God, namely that the author of existence is contemplated by means of the creation, and to declare nothing godless and impious concerning such a great God?

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