Annotatio CCLXII
”The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel, by the hand of Malachi,” etc. — Malachi 1:1
Origen, following the edition of the LXX — who, for that which in Hebrew is put בְּיַד מַלְאָכִי (Be-yad Malachi), translated ἐν χειρὶ ἀγγέλου, that is, “By the hand of the angel” — asserted that the author of this book was an incarnate Angel;1 which Jerome, who thinks that the author of the volume was Ezra, indicated in the preface of Malachi in these words: “Origen wrote three volumes upon this book, but he touched not the history [literal sense] at all; and, after his manner, being wholly occupied in the allegorical interpretation, he made no mention of Ezra, but, thinking [it] to have been an Angel who wrote [it] — according to that [saying] which we read concerning John,2 ‘Behold, I send my angel before thy face’ — which we altogether do not” ### ANNOTATIO CCLXII (concluded)
“The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel, by the hand of Malachi,” etc. — Malachi 1:1
(Jerome against Origen concludes:) ”…[which we] altogether do not receive, lest we be compelled to admit the falls of Souls from heaven.” And in the commentaries on Haggai, chapter 1, repeating the same more fully, he says: “Certain [persons] think that John the Baptist, and Malachi (which is interpreted ‘Angel of the Lord’), and Haggai were Angels, and, by the dispensation and command of God, assumed human bodies, and were conversant among men — nor [is it] a wonder that this was believed concerning Angels, since for our salvation even the Son of God assumed a human body. And for this cause also they furnish testimony from the apocrypha, where it is said that Jacob (who afterward was called Israel) was an angel, and that on that account he supplanted [his] brother in the womb of his mother; and that John, too, exulted at the voice of the mother of the Lord in the womb of Elizabeth; and that there is one nature of all rational [beings]; and that for this cause men who have pleased God are made equal to the Angels. Let those [persons] hold this opinion: but we [hold] otherwise.” This passage is had in Origen, volume 2 on the Gospel of John, and in book 3 of the Peri Archon.