Jerome : The meaning is: Son of man, these men who sit before you have placed their impurities or thoughts in their hearts; and, according to Symmachus and Theodotion, idols and scandal, that is, the destruction and torment of their wickedness, they have set against their own face and thus they came to seek the word of the Lord. Should I respond to people of this kind, who come to me with their previous thoughts, not even abandoning their impiety in this time, but believing in idols and fraudulent divinations; holding on to the ruin of wickedness against their own face and torment, while despairing of better things and being prepared for punishment, and thus desiring to know my words through you? — Commentary on Ezekiel Origen of Alexandria : No one among us thinks that tortures are inflicted by anyone other than ourselves. — HOMILIES ON Ezekiel 3:7 Origen of Alexandria : When the interior person perseveres according to the image of the Creator, then a person is born, and twice is the person made a person according to the exterior and the interior kind. — HOMILIES ON Ezekiel 3:8