Fragments on Lamentations · §43 · Origen of Alexandria

Let their evil come under oversight unto healing

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That is: let their wickedness not still more be left free to use, but let it come to be in your oversight—as if someone should pray that wounds come into sight of a physician toward obtaining complete healing; for this is the “all.” (Lamentations 1:22) For most blessed is first not to sin, and second that all our wickedness be overseen by God.

Greek

Klagel. Jerem. 1, 22. Τουτέστι· μὴ ἐπὶ πλέον ἀφεθῇ χρῆσθαι αὐτῶν ἡ κακία, γέ- νοιτο δέ σου ἐν ἐπισκοπῇ, ὡς εἴ τις εὔξαιτο τραύματα εἰς ὄφιν ἐλθεῖν ἰατροῦ πρὸς τὸ τυχεῖν τελείας ἰάσεως· τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ πᾶσα· μακάριον γὰρ μάλιστα μὲν τὸ μὴ ἁμαρτεῖν, δεύτρον δὲ τὸ πᾶσαν ἡμῶν ἐπισκοπεῖσθαι παρὰ θεοῦ τὴν κακίαν.

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Origen on Lamentations: Jeremiah's grief for captive Jerusalem, read also as the soul taken captive by sin and set free by Christ.

Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 254) was a Christian teacher in Alexandria and head of the catechetical school. This English is his fragments on Lamentations.

The full commentary is lost. What survives are short passages kept in later chains of quotations. He sets out the literal sense, the Hebrew form of the book, and its historical setting, and he compares the Greek translations.

A reader meets Jeremiah lamenting the fall of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem read both as the city and as the soul. Origen quotes Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion. He also cites Paul, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Zechariah, and Daniel. He uses Septuagint book names and Psalm numbering.

EditionKlostermann, Origenes Werke III (GCS 6, 1901)

We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Greek on any section to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

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