If we may explain the massacre of
enemies at the same time as we interpret the righteous man’s power over all
things, we would say that in the words ‘Every morning I killed all the sinners
on earth, to destroy from the city of the Lord all the workers of iniquity’, he
allegorically calls the flesh ‘earth’’, the mind of which is enmity towards
God; and by ‘the city of the Lord’ he means his own soul in which was a temple
of God, because it possessed a right opinion and conception of God so as to
become an object of admiration to all who see it. Accordingly, at the same time
as the rays of ‘the sun of righteousness’ were illuminating his soul, he was,
as it were, being empowered and strengthened by them; and so he destroyed every
‘carnal mind’, here called ‘the sinners upon earth’, and destroyed form the
city of the Lord in his soul all the thoughts that are ‘workers of iniquity’
and the desires hostile to the truth.
It is in this sense also that the
righteous destroy everything remaining alive of the enemies which originate
from evil, so that there is left not even an infant sin which has only just
become implanted. Thus also we understand the saying in the 136th Psalm which
reads as follows: ‘O daughter of Babylon, thou wretched one, blessed is he who
shall repay thee thy reward which thou didst repay to us; blessed is he who
shall take hold of thy infants and dash them against rock.’ The infants of Babylon,
which means confusion, are the confused thoughts caused by evil which have just
been implanted and are growing up in the soul. The man who takes hold of them,
so that he breaks their heads of the firmness and solidity of the Word, is dashing
the infants of Babylon against the rock; and on this account he becomes
blessed. Supposing, then, that God does command men to kill the works of iniquity,
children and all, and to slaughter their entire race, His
teaching in no way contradicts the proclamation of Jesus. And we may also grant
that before the eyes of those who are Jews in secret God brings
about the destruction of their enemies and of all the works caused by evil. And
we may take it that this time is the meaning when those who are disobedient to
God’s law and word are compared to enemies; for their characters are
moulded by evil so that they suffer the penalties which are deserved by people who
forsake God’s words. (Origen, Contra Celsum 7:22, in Origen: Contra Celsum [trans.
Henry Chadwick; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953], 412-13)
