Annotatio CCXXXIV

”Write this man abominated, or sterile.” — Jeremiah 22:30

Origen, in the fifth book of the Stromata, expounding this wrongly, Jerome censures, in book 4 of the commentaries on Jeremiah, in these words:¹ “Origen refers this passage to Christ — that from the hand of the Father he was torn off like a ring, and sent into the land of captivity, into the vale of tears, and delivered to the cross; his mother also — doubtless — [being] the synagogue captured and cast out; and he does not fear, in commemorating these things, to understand this which follows — ‘O earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord: thus saith the Lord, Write this man abominated, or sterile,’ and the rest — of the Lord of majesty. But he writes this, lest his disciples dare to deny [it], in the fifth book of the Stromata.” These things Jerome against Origen — who, it is credible, brought these things forth (expounding, as he does, allegorically) concerning Christ, in that sense in which Paul dared to say that Christ was made for us sin, a curse, and an execration:² that is, an oblation for sin and for the curse, to which we all were liable.