Unveiled face mirroring the Lord glory

Their eyes were closed to me, because I was a burden to them and seemed harsh. For long before, he had said: "Bring their days to an end, and your word will be to me a joy and gladness of heart." All this happened after the plot against the Savior, when they were scattered everywhere; for he came upon them, saying, "Every righteous blood poured out." The completion of this act shows that they received the full measure of the worship due against them, and that they no longer enriched the people of God. The defense of my heart was a labor to them, because you will give them toil as a sensation of how long you have been defending them, so that they may seek you again. But if not, you will pursue them in your wrath. Beginning the present fourth elementary instruction, he took up again the lament concerning the eminent ones, saying that the surface was to be darkened, declaring that the justice poured out like water had been wiped away. Yet the holy ones, as elect through the fathers or through those taken with Joachim, whom he likened to good figs. And shortly after: from the departures of those from the holy land, "leading them to destruction," and into the intellectual Babylon, "that they may be taught not to blaspheme." You might say the lament also applies to those who change from godliness, if indeed they are notable and lead others into error, "having left the fountain of living water, become cracked cisterns that cannot hold." Therefore, they pour out about the error, groaning early. The fourteen who adorn themselves with wealth, or even with gold more precious, how could they thus be brought low against the humble and broken, led into slavery, and be imagined as such? Yet he said to them that they should imagine themselves, and when he went down "to the potter's house," having taken a vessel, he broke it.

Origen continues his lament over the ruined state of Jerusalem, citing Isaiah’s prophecy that the city’s ruins would be like shattered pottery—worthless fragments of a broken vessel. He then turns to the famine that struck the noble citizens, describing how even infants suffered, so extreme was the deprivation that Jerusalem, once a mother to its people, could no longer provide nourishment—not even to beasts in the field, let alone to its own children. This overwhelming suffering and the resulting forgetfulness of human nature, he says, work together to produce a spiritual desolation. In this state, people begin to heed the whispers of evil spirits, likened to dragons or the Sirens as understood by Symmachus, whose seductive voices lead them astray. These evil influences are those who have introduced the teachings of the impious, corrupting the young with false doctrine. Origen asks rhetorically: how can those who have been made effeminate by such teachings—whom even Pharaoh once sought to destroy by killing the males—still be considered daughters? They have abandoned the true teaching of God, the desert wisdom, and instead wander the earth, feeding on falsehoods like ostriches that cannot fly. Symmachus, in his translation, used the term “ostrich” to describe such useless teachers, and Origen agrees, noting that just as the Sirens of myth lured travelers to destruction with sweet sounds, so too do these false teachers ensnare the innocent with pleasing but deadly words. He rebukes even the good teachers among them, saying they have not shown equal concern for those who wander in search of truth. These trials—of siege and exile—have been endured by the people. One might say, as the prophetic word declares, that they suffered famine not for lack of bread or water, but because they were deprived of hearing the word of the Lord. Therefore, Origen prophesies concerning their newborns, who inherit this spiritual barrenness. Historically, he reflects on the events of the captivity, but intellectually he turns to the famine of the teaching word—the absence of true doctrine. For, he insists, the poverty of those who suffer is not so much in material lack as in this deeper, more grievous spiritual destitution.

For these also Paul laments, saying, "Whose is the adoption and the glory." For now they engage in empty studies, not delighting in Moses and the prophets, as in the command, "Beat your breast for the Lord." Indeed, none of them breaks to them the nourishing word, nor do they partake of the fattened calf, though they themselves have sacrificed. He calls the dispersions "exoduses," or also the deviations of the legal writings. Formerly they were fed on the scarlet dye, they prophetically heard the future outpouring of the Savior’s blood, and now they tear themselves apart from earthly thoughts. Symmachus says the one, as if in haste, suddenly gave forth; the other, they did not labor, which they did not wound. For what more concise word of God has said, "Behold, your house is left to you desolate," and only to him who is willing to give? The lawlessness of Jerusalem has been magnified above that of Sodom. Those had only the natural law; these also had the written law and the prophets, as many marvelous things God worked in them. Those indeed erred toward angels and like men; but these toward the Savior and Redeemer long ago, indeed from Egypt, now to the worship of demons, if they received the One who came to them beforehand. For he says, "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Symmachus: the chaste, set apart from her above snow, before milk,