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Translated by Allan Menzies.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
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This Part: 132 Pages
Page 20
It is therefore a very appropriate punishment that falls on Zacharias on his saying to the angel, [4867] "Whereby shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife well stricken in years." For his want of faith with regard to the birth of the voice, he is himself deprived of his voice, as the angel Gabriel says to him, "Behold, thou shalt be silent and not able to speak until the day that these things shall come to pass, because thou hast not believed my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season." And afterwards when he had "asked for a writing tablet and written, His name is John; and they all marvelled," he recovered his voice; for "his mouth was opened immediately and his tongue, and he spake, blessing God." We discussed above how it is to be understood that the Logos is the Son of God, and went over the ideas connected with that; and a similar sequence of ideas is to be observed at this point. John came for a witness; he was a man sent from God to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe; he was that voice, then, we are to understand, which alone was fitted worthily to announce the Logos. We shall understand this aright if we call to mind what was adduced in our exposition of the texts: "That all might believe through Him," and "This is he of whom it is written, Behold I send My messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee." [4868] There is fitness, too, in his being said to be the voice, not of one saying in the wilderness, but of one crying in the wilderness. He who cries, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," also says it; but he might say it without crying it. But he cries and shouts it, that even those may hear who are at a distance from the speaker, and that even the deaf may understand the greatness of the tidings, since it is announced in a great voice; and he thus brings help, both to those who have departed from God and to those who have lost the acuteness of their hearing.
[4867] Luke i. 18.
[4868] Matt. xi. 10.
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/john-commentary-2.asp?pg=20
