TRV
Origen of Alexandria
Ante-Nicene · to AD 325
2,651 passages across 61 books of the Bible · Who was this?
On Isaiah
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Isaiah 48:16
Did the Father and the Holy Spirit send Jesus, or did the Father send both Christ and the Spirit? The latter is correct. For, because the Savior was sent, afterwards the Holy Spirit was sent also, that the prediction of the prophet might be fulfilled.
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Isaiah 49:2
If anyone has been able to hold in the breadth of his mind and to consider the glory and splendor of all those things created in him, he will be struck by their very beauty and transfixed by the magnificence of their brilliance or, as the prophet says, “by the chosen arrow.” And he will receive from him the saving wound and will burn with the blessed fire of his love.
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Isaiah 49:8
God says through the prophet, “In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” What other time, then, is more acceptable than when for piety toward God in Christ we are led under guard in procession before the world, celebrating a triumph rather than being led in triumph? For the martyrs in Christ disarm the principalities and powers with him, and they share his triumph as fellows of his sufferings, becoming in this way also fellows of the courageous deeds wrought in his sufferings. These deeds include triumphing over principalities and powers, which in a short time you will see conquered and put to shame. What other day is so much a day of salvation as the one when we gain such deliverance from them?
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Isaiah 50:1
Hear what the prophet says: “You have been sold for your sins, and for your iniquities I sent your mother away.” You see, therefore, that we are all creatures of God. But each one is sold for his own sins and, for his own iniquities, separates from his Creator. We, therefore, belong to God insofar as we have been created by him. But we have become slaves of the devil insofar as we have been sold for our sins. Christ came, however, and “bought us back” when we were serving that lord to whom we sold ourselves by sinning. And so [Christ] appears to have recovered as his own those whom he created; to have acquired as people belonging to another, indeed, those who had sought another Lord for themselves by sinning.
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Isaiah 50:11
If then this is the character of the body that rises from the dead, let us now see what is the meaning of the threatened “eternal fire.” Now we find in the prophet Isaiah that the fire by which each person is punished is described as belonging to himself. For it says, “Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled for yourselves.” These words seem to indicate that every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire and is not plunged into a fire that has been previously kindled by someone else or that existed before him.
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Isaiah 50:11
This “fire” is not “from the altar.” The fire that is “from the altar” is the fire of the Lord. But that which is outside the altar is not of the Lord but is properly of each one who sins.… This fire is of those who have ignited it, just as it also was written in other places, “Walk in your fire and in the flame which you kindled for yourselves.” But to Isaiah his own fire was not applied but the fire of the altar that “will cleanse his lips.”
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Isaiah 52:7
“How are beautiful are the feet of those who announce good things!” Since Isaiah perceived the beautiful and opportune preaching of the apostles who follow the One who said, “I am the way,” he praises the feet that proceed over the intelligible way, which is Christ Jesus, and go in to God through the door. Those whose feet are beautiful announce Jesus as “good tidings.”
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Isaiah 52:11
It says, “you who carry the vessels of the Lord be separated and depart from their midst, says the Lord.” “Separate yourself” from earthly deeds; “separate yourself” from the desire of the world.… Moreover, we say to be set apart not from places but from deeds, not from regions but from ways of life.
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Isaiah 53:2
There are, indeed, admitted to be recorded some statements respecting the body of Jesus having been “ill-favored”; not, however, “ignoble,” as has been stated, nor is there any certain evidence that he was “little.”
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Isaiah 54:1
So when he was not a desert or a land made dry to Israel, he was, with respect to what is particular, a desert and land made dry to the pagan nations. But when he turned away from Israel and became to that Israel like a desert and land made dry, then grace was poured forth on the pagan nations, and Jesus Christ became now to us not a desert but abundance, and not a land made dry but one that bears fruit.
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Isaiah 54:12
It seems to me also that that fancy of Plato, that those stones that we call precious stones which derive their luster from a reflection, as it were, of the stones in that better land, is taken from the words of Isaiah in describing the city of God: “I will make your battlements of jasper, your stones shall be crystal and your borders of precious stones.”
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Isaiah 60:1
And the Logos, exhorting us to come to this light, says, in the prophecies of Isaiah, “Enlighten yourself, enlighten yourself, O Jerusalem, for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen on you.” Observe now the difference between the fine phrases of Plato respecting the chief good and the declarations of our prophets regarding the light of the blessed; and notice that the truth as it is contained in Plato concerning this subject did not at all help his readers to attain to a pure worship of God, or even himself, who could philosophize so grandly about the chief good, whereas the simple language of the Scriptures led to their honest readers being filled with a divine spirit; and this light is nourished within them by the oil, which as a certain parable is said to have preserved the light of the torches of the five wise virgins.
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Isaiah 60:16
And they will be called the city of the Lord, Zion of holy Israel. On account of your being trapped and despised when there was no help, I will give you eternal rejoicing and joy for ages to come. And though you desire the milk of the nations and to consume the riches of kings, so that you might know that I am the Lord who saved you and led you out of Israel, “I will render for you gold instead of brass, and silver instead of steel … and I will give you rulers in peace and your bishops in justice, and injustice will no longer be heard in your land.”
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Isaiah 60:19-20
We must keep in mind, however, that the Word promises to the righteous through the mouth of Isaiah that days will come when not the sun but the Lord will be to them an everlasting light, and God will be their glory. And it is from misunderstanding, I think, some pestilent heresy that gave an interpretation to the words “let there be light,” as if they were the expression of a wish merely on the part of the Creator, that Celsus made the remark, “The Creator did not borrow light from above, like those persons who kindle lamps at those of their neighbors.”
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Isaiah 65:11
If a person, because he is too tenacious of life or too weak in the face of suffering, or because of the apparently convincing arguments of such as seek to induce us to accept the evil choice, has denied the one and only God and his Christ and borne testimony to demons or goddesses of fortune, then this person must realize that in doing this he is “setting,” as it were, “a table for the demon and offering libations” to Fortune, “forsaking the Lord” and “forgetting his holy mount.” He will incur the reproaches written in Isaiah.
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Isaiah 65:17
Isaiah also, declaring prophetically that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, undoubtedly suggests a similar view. For this renewal of heaven and earth, and this transformation of the form of the present world and this changing of the heavens will undoubtedly be prepared for those who are walking along and are tending to that goal of happiness to which, it is said, even enemies themselves are to be subjected and in which God is said to be “all in all.” And if anyone imagines that at the end, material, that is, bodily nature will be entirely destroyed, he cannot in any respect meet my view, how beings so numerous and powerful are able to live and to exist without bodies, since it is an attribute of the divine nature alone.… Another, perhaps, may say that in the end every bodily substance will be so pure and refined as to be like the ether and of a celestial purity and clearness. How things will be, however, is known with certainty to God alone and to those who are his friends through Christ and the Holy Spirit.
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Isaiah 66:2
If you are not “humble and peaceful,” the grace of the Holy Spirit cannot live within you, if you do not receive the divine words with fear. For the Holy Spirit departs from the proud and stubborn and false soul. Therefore, you ought first to meditate on the law of God that, if perhaps your deeds are intemperate and your habits disordered, the law of God may correct you and reform you.