Context No. 97 of 4322 · Sirach
Context · Reflection
Sirach 30:17-25: in context
17Death is better than a bitter life, and eternal rest than a continual sickness. 18Good things poured out upon a mouth that is closed are like food offerings laid upon a grave. 19What does an offering profit an idol? For it can’t eat or smell. So is he who is punished by the Lord, 20seeing with his eyes and groaning, like a eunuch embracing a virgin and groaning. 21Don’t give your soul to sorrow. Don’t afflict yourself deliberately. 22Gladness of heart is the life of a man. Cheerfulness of a man lengthens his days. 23Love your own soul, and comfort your heart. Remove sorrow far from you, for sorrow has destroyed many, and there is no profit in it. 24Envy and wrath shorten life. Anxiety brings old age before its time. 25Those who are cheerful and merry will benefit from their food.
Ben Sira, writing in Jerusalem around 180 BC, spends much of his book on practical instruction. This passage is about health, grief, and the damage that sustained sorrow does to a body, and it is blunter than most religious writing on the subject.
He starts at the dark end. Death is better than a bitter life, he says, and eternal rest than chronic illness. Good things set before a mouth that cannot eat are like offerings laid on a grave, or food set before an idol that can neither eat nor smell. He is describing the experience of being unable to enjoy what is right in front of you.
Then the counsel turns. Do not give yourself over to sorrow, and do not distress yourself deliberately. Gladness of heart is the life of a man, and joy lengthens his days. Love your own soul, comfort your heart, and put grief far away, because grief has destroyed many and there is no profit in it. Ben Sira treats persistent sorrow as a physical danger, not a moral failure, and treats cheerfulness as something to be actively defended. His phrase is love your own soul. Where am I deliberately holding on to a sorrow, and would I ask anyone I love to keep holding it?
Sources
- Sirach 30:21-25: the counsel against giving yourself over to sorrow, and gladness as the life of a man
- Sirach 38:1-15: Ben Sira on physicians and medicine, unusual for his time
- Ben Sira writing in Jerusalem about 180 BC, translated into Greek by his grandson