Twenty-two thousand and the mystery of number
It is written that the Levites were found to number twenty-two thousand. Numbers records many differing counts of Israel’s sons; the Levites are tallied apart. The firstborn of Israel come to twenty-two thousand two hundred seventy-three — an excess of two hundred seventy-three. Twenty-two is a sacred number in the Scriptures: twenty-two Hebrew letters; twenty-two fathers from Adam to Jacob; the kinds of creatures gathered under that count. So both Levites and firstborns are titled with this admirable number. The two hundred seventy-three mark the days of human generation — nine months and three days of the tenth. Thus twenty-two gathers the mystical sum of creatures; the firstborns’ surplus sets forth the mystery of human birth. The sons of Levi are divided into the orders of Kohath, Gershon, and Merari — differences not without mystery.
Latin
Scriptum est viginti duo milia Levitas numero inventos esse. Liber Numerorum multas numerorum differentias de filiis Israel conscribit; Levitae seorsum recensentur. Primogeniti filiorum Israel inveniuntur viginti duo milia ducenti septuaginta tres — abundant ducenti septuaginta tres. Numerus viginti duo in scripturis sacer: viginti duo elementa Hebraeorum, viginti duo patres ab Adam usque ad Iacob, species creaturarum intra hunc numerum. Ideo Levitae et primogeniti hoc numero titulantur. Ducenti septuaginta tres dies generationis humanae significant — novem menses et triduum mensis decimi. Ita in viginti duobus summa creaturarum mystica colligitur; in abundantia primogenitorum mysterium humanae generationis exponitur. Filii Levi in ordines Caath, Gerson, Merari dividuntur diversitatibus non sine mysteriis.
About this text
Origen’s Homilia IV on Numbers (Rufinus’s Latin). Complete on this page: §§1–3.
English follows Baehrens, Origenes Werke VII (GCS 30, 1921), Rufinus’s Latin of Homilia IV. Scheck FOTC was not used as wording. This page is Homilia IV §§1–3 (closeout).
Witnesses
- Copy-text Baehrens, Origenes Werke VII = GCS 30 (1921) (Latin · Homilia IV §§1–3)
English is newly prepared for study from the stated edition. Open Latin on each section (or the Latin source witness link) for the source text. This is not a complete critical edition.