English · KJV

Origen of Alexandria

Ante-Nicene · to AD 325 · 2,651 passages across 61 books

Commentary

481–500 of 2,651
Ezekiel 16:25

Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms.

Possessing these things, she is of great beauty, but she is corrupted by the divisions of heretics and foreign religious systems.
Ezekiel 16:26

Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, great of flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to provoke me to anger.

You see that she is handed over to the souls of strangers, she who is unworthy to practice the law and the words of God.
Ezekiel 16:28

Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied.

When God makes covenants with us and we consent to them, we are blessed. But when we prostitute ourselves to the spirits of evil, then we turn the covenants of God into the land of Canaan, and we make a pact with her.
Ezekiel 16:30 · 4 passages

How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman;

There is no doubt that the word of the orator provokes the hero to worse things when a heretic builds up his hero in the perversions of heresy by what he says.
If you understand fornication of the flesh and the soul and the spirit, and if you see someone fornicating in them, you will also see Jerusalem fornicating herself three times.
As the law is not made for the just but for the lawless and those who are not subjected to God, so the teaching that warns us away from fornication does not become chaste but is for the lawless and the fornicators and the disobedient.
Those who have not completely gone away from religion but are conquered by sin and who want their sin to be hidden behave exactly like a prostitute who has been insulted.
Ezekiel 16:31

In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire;

Ecclesiastics who are leaders in the church build the house of God, the church, in their own way of life as well as those of their faithful, and their work is the building of God.
Ezekiel 16:33

They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom.

The husband of the soul is the word of God, a spouse truly loving, who has given her chastity, justice and all the other gifts.
Ezekiel 16:42

So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry.

If you do not recover your senses when you have been chastised, if you are not corrected when you have been reproved, if you despise when you are beaten, you must realize that if you go on continually sinning his jealousy will depart from you and that which is said to Jerusalem by the prophet Ezekiel will be said to you: “Therefore my jealousy will depart from you, and I will no longer be angry with you.” Behold the mercy and piety of the good God.… This is terrible! This is the end when we are no longer reproached for sins, when we offend and are no longer corrected. For then, when we have exceeded the measure of sinning “the jealous God” turns his jealousy away from us, as he said above, or my jealousy will be removed from you, and I will no longer be angry over you.
Ezekiel 16:45 · 3 passages

Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

To put it more clearly, the origin of all evils is the multitude, but the origin of good things is to retire from the crowd and to confine oneself to the solitary life.
Where there are sins, where there are multitudes of people, there are schisms, there are heresies, there are dissensions. But where there is virtue, there is unity, union, from which the single heart and spirit of all believers were made.
As the Father and Son are one, so those who have one Spirit are brought together in unity.
Ezekiel 16:46 · 3 passages

And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.

Virtue makes me to have Christ as my brother, so that I may be both good and well-mannered.
This is to despise Zion and to trust in the mountain of Samaria. For if we ecclesiastics sin, heretics are certainly not strangers to us in the perversion of their teaching.
What are these two sisters of Jerusalem the sinner? Schism and division of the people created Samaria.
Ezekiel 16:49 · 3 passages

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

Often having a fullness and an abundance of bread is the cause of arrogance. But often the sin of pride also arises over spiritual gifts, and discernment is needed to distinguish the one from the other.
To know that sins are unequal you only have to look at the teaching of the Scriptures, which will leave you in no doubt.
What then is the sin most great of all sins? It is the one for which the devil fell.… Pride is greater than all sins, and the principal sin of the devil.… Often the reason for pride is for him who disregards having an ecclesiastical dignity.
Ezekiel 16:51

Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.

My Lord Jesus Christ is justified according to the dispensation of the flesh that he purified for our salvation, by Abraham, by Isaac, by Jacob and by the rest of the prophets.

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