Context No. 2612 of 4322 · Sirach

Sirach 18:17-33: in context

17Behold, isn’t a word better than a gift? Both are with a gracious person. 18A fool is ungracious and abusive. The gift of a grudging person consumes the eyes. 19Learn before you speak. Take care of your health before you get sick. 20Before judgment, examine yourself, and in the hour of scrutiny you will find forgiveness. 21Humble yourself before you get sick. In the time of sins, repent. 22Let nothing hinder you to pay your vow in due time. Don’t wait until death to be released. 23Before you make a vow, prepare yourself. Don’t be like a man who tests the Lord. 24Think about the wrath coming in the days of the end, and the time of vengeance, when he turns away his face. 25In the days of fullness remember the time of hunger. Remember poverty and lack in the days of wealth. 26From morning until evening, the time changes. All things are speedy before the Lord. 27A wise man is cautious in everything. In days of sinning, he will beware of offense. 28Every man of understanding knows wisdom. He will give thanks to him who found her. 29They who were of understanding in sayings also became wise themselves, and poured out apt proverbs. 30Don’t go after your lusts. Restrain your appetites. 31If you give fully to your soul the delight of her desire, she will make you the laughing stock of your enemies. 32Don’t make merry in much luxury, and don’t be tied to its expense. 33Don’t be made a beggar by banqueting with borrowed money when you have nothing in your purse.

Sirach strings together practical counsels for a wise life, and one of them cuts against a common blindness: in the days of plenty, remember the time of hunger; in wealth, remember poverty and want. He warns against being ruled by appetite, against luxury that ties you to its expense, and against the folly of being made a beggar by feasting on borrowed money when your purse is empty.

The wisdom is about memory in the good times. When things are full, it is easy to forget that they were once lean and may be again, to spend as though the plenty were permanent and the hunger a thing of the past. Sirach says: remember. Let the memory of scarcity keep you humble, grateful, and prudent while you have abundance, rather than presumptuous and wasteful. And he is blunt about living beyond your means, the folly of borrowing to feast. Plenty tends to make us forgetful; the wise deliberately remember the hunger even at the banquet, and it keeps them from ruin.

In my seasons of plenty, do I remember the leaner times and stay humble and prudent, or does abundance make me forgetful and wasteful?

Sources

Sirach 18:25: In the days of fullness remember the time of hunger. Remember poverty and lack in the days of wealth.
Sirach 18:30: Don't go after your lusts. Restrain your appetites.
Sirach 18:33: Don't be made a beggar by banqueting with borrowed money when you have nothing in your purse.