Annotation CCXXXVII, The incarceration of souls (Jeremiah 28:13)

Annotatio CCXXXVII

”Thou hast broken chains, or wooden yokes: I will make for them iron yokes.” — Jeremiah 28:13

Origen, discoursing on these things allegorically, said that Souls sinned in the heavens, and that on that account the Souls of demons [were sent down] into aerial, subtler bodies, but the Souls of men into grosser bodies sent down. Jerome reports this, in book 5 on Jeremiah, thus writing:¹ “The allegorical interpreter dotes in this place, calling forks and wooden chains ‘ethereal and aerial bodies’ — namely of the Demons and of the adverse powers — but ‘iron forks or chains’ our grosser bodies, which are woven together with nerves and with bones of flesh and veins: so that those who wished, out of the heavenly Jerusalem, according to the quality of [their] sin, to undergo lesser torments, are condemned into the chains of our bodies, and sustain the wailing of infancy, the bonds of swaddling-cloths, and filth, and serve the Devil, the king of Babylon — that is, of this world (Scripture saying, ‘The world is set in the malignant one’ [1 John 5:19]) — together with the beasts of the earth, which [souls] are bound fast into the bodies of brute animals.” See above, Annotation 185.