Sirach

No. 48 Sirach 35:1-20
Sirach, also called Ecclesiasticus, is a book of wisdom written in Jerusalem around 180 BC by a teacher named Ben Sira, and kept in the Catholic Bible. He is a man deeply committed to the temple and its...
No. 97 Sirach 30:17-25
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...
No. 116 Sirach 12:1-18
Ben Sira wrote his book of wisdom in Jerusalem around 180 BC, and this passage is among his least comfortable. It is advice about who deserves your generosity, and it says plainly: know to whom you are doing...
No. 154 Sirach 44:1-16
Ben Sira closes his book with a long roll of Israel's ancestors, running from Enoch to the high priest of his own day. This passage is the opening of it, and its first line has been read at funerals and...
No. 170 Sirach 42:17-25
Ben Sira turns from practical instruction to the created world, and this passage is his account of why he cannot finish the account. God has not empowered even his holy ones to tell all his marvelous works, he...
No. 181 Sirach 21:1-16
Ben Sira writes this passage as a father to a son, and it opens with an instruction about sin that puts the order in an unexpected place. Have you sinned? Do it no more, and pray about your past sins. Stopping...
No. 253 Sirach 51:17-30
Sirach is a book of wisdom written by a Jewish teacher, Ben Sira, about a hundred and eighty years before Christ, and this is nearly its last page. Having spent the whole book instructing others, he ends with...
No. 290 Sirach 15:1-20
Sirach here takes on a very old excuse and refuses to let it stand: the idea that when we sin, it is really God's doing. People have always found ways to say it. Ben Sira quotes them directly. Do not say, it...
No. 418 Sirach 6:33-37
Sirach here gives a practical program for becoming wise, and what stands out is that every step is active. Wisdom, in Ben Sira's account, is not downloaded or handed over; it is pursued, deliberately and...
No. 434 Sirach 3:17-31
Ben Sira's counsel here is all about humility, and one strand of it cuts against a very modern reflex. Do not seek things that are too hard for you, he says, and do not search out what is beyond your strength....
No. 460 Sirach 44:17-23
This passage comes from the great roll call of heroes in Sirach, the praise of the faithful men of old, and it moves quickly through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, tracing the covenant that God made and...
No. 523 Sirach 42:1-16
Sirach here is giving practical wisdom, and it opens with a line that cuts surprisingly deep: do not be ashamed of these things, and do not sin to save face. Then it lists the things a person of integrity...
No. 526 Sirach 31:17-31
Sirach turns here to something very ordinary: how to eat and drink. And his counsel is neither indulgent nor grim. He warns against greed at the table, do not reach out your hand before others, do not be...
No. 740 Sirach 3:1-16
Sirach devotes a long, warm passage to a single commandment, honor your father and your mother, and turns it over from every side. Honoring a father atones for sins, he says; glorifying a mother is like laying...
No. 770 Sirach 11:18-34
Sirach watches a familiar figure: the man who works hard and denies himself for years and finally arrives. One grows rich by his diligence, Sirach says, and then the day comes when he tells himself, I have...
No. 846 Sirach 34:1-16
Sirach has a low opinion of the ways people try to secure their future through hidden signs. Vain and false hopes are for the fool, he writes, and dreams give wings to a fool's imagination. Setting your heart...
No. 872 Sirach 43:17-33
Ben Sira, the sage of this wisdom book, is in the middle of a long hymn to God through his works. This part moves through weather: thunder that rebukes the earth, snow scattered like birds settling, frost...
No. 962 Sirach 32:1-16
Ben Sira gives practical wisdom for social settings, especially banquets. If they have made you master of the feast, do not put on airs; be among the guests as one of them, see to their needs first, and only...
No. 972 Sirach 1:17-30
Ben Sira is unfolding what it means that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Here he calls it the crown of wisdom and the root of wisdom both, the thing wisdom grows from and the thing that...
No. 1012 Sirach 14:1-16
Ben Sira turns his attention to the miser, the person who hoards and cannot enjoy what he has. He is blunt: riches do the stingy person no good; what use is money to a miser? The one who denies himself is only...
No. 1031 Sirach 45:17-26
Ben Sira is praising the priestly line, Aaron and after him Phinehas. He recalls the authority God gave Aaron to teach and to judge, how the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram against him was consumed by...
No. 1135 Sirach 29:17-28
Ben Sira gives hard-nosed practical wisdom about money and dependence. He warns about standing surety, guaranteeing another's debts, which has ruined many, and about the misery of being a poor dependent in...
No. 1191 Sirach 19:17-30
Ben Sira reflects on true and false wisdom. All wisdom, he says, is the fear of the Lord, and in all wisdom is the keeping of the law. The knowledge of how to do wickedness is not wisdom, and the shrewdness of...
No. 1260 Sirach 50:1-16
Ben Sira closes his praise of Israel's great figures with a glowing portrait of Simon the high priest. He recalls how Simon repaired and fortified the temple and the city. But the heart of the passage is Simon...
No. 1282 Sirach 1:1-16
Ben Sira opens his book with a meditation on wisdom. All wisdom, he says, comes from the Lord and is with him forever. No one can count the sand or the raindrops or search out the height of heaven or the depth...
No. 1301 Sirach 16:1-17
Ben Sira warns against valuing children by number rather than by godliness: one who fears God is worth more than a thousand who do not, and it is better to die childless than to leave ungodly offspring. Then...
No. 1310 Sirach 39:1-16
Ben Sira paints a portrait of the person devoted to the wisdom of God. Such a one applies his soul to the law of the Most High, searches out the wisdom of the ancients, occupies himself with prophecies, and...
No. 1382 Sirach 41:1-16
Ben Sira reflects on death and on what outlasts it. Death is bitter, he says, to the one at ease in his prosperity, and welcome to the one worn out by suffering and age; and he counsels, do not fear the...
No. 1401 Sirach 29:1-16
Ben Sira gives frank counsel about lending and generosity. Show mercy by lending to your neighbor in his need, he says, and keep your own word to repay on time. But he is honest about the trouble that lending...
No. 1519 Sirach 32:17-24
Ben Sira offers practical wisdom for acting well. A sinful man shuns reproof, he observes, and the proud man acts without taking counsel, then regrets it. Do nothing without counsel, he advises, but once you...
No. 1580 Sirach 19:1-16
Ben Sira gives frank counsel about the tongue and the ear. Never repeat what is told you, he says, and you will lose nothing; whether of friend or foe, do not tell it. Have you heard something? Let it die with...
No. 1679 Sirach 24:1-16
In this chapter of Sirach, Wisdom speaks and praises herself. I came from the mouth of the Most High, she says, and covered the earth like a mist. She tells how she ranged over heaven and the depths, over...
No. 1695 Sirach 43:1-16
Sirach lifts his eyes to the sky and turns what he sees into praise. The clear heaven in its glory, the sun that rises like a marvel and scorches the earth at noon, the moon that marks the seasons and the...
No. 1697 Sirach 7:17-36
This stretch of Sirach is a string of practical counsels for a whole life: be humble; do not trade away a true friend or a good spouse; treat servants and workers fairly; raise your children well; honor your...
No. 1743 Sirach 30:1-16
This chapter of Sirach turns from counsel about raising children to a set of sayings about the goods of life, and it ends on a striking note about health. Better a poor man who is healthy and strong, Sirach...
No. 1766 Sirach 50:17-29
Sirach describes the people falling on their faces in worship as the high priest blesses them, the singers praising, the whole house filled with prayer. Then he closes his book with a blessing and a colophon:...
No. 1865 Sirach 34:17-26
Sirach speaks bluntly about worship that is contradicted by how we live. God takes no pleasure in offerings drawn from ill-gotten gain, or from robbing the poor; such a sacrifice is a mockery. And he presses...
No. 1874 Sirach 2:1-18
Sirach opens with a bracing word to anyone who would follow God. My son, if you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for testing. Set your heart, endure steadfastly, and do not be hasty in time of...
No. 1915 Sirach 49:1-16
Sirach praises the memory of the good king Josiah: it is like sweet incense prepared by the perfumer, sweet as honey in every mouth. Josiah did what was right, removed the abominations of idolatry, and made...
No. 1998 Sirach 47:1-16
Sirach praises David, recalling how he killed the giant, called upon God who gave him strength, and won victory over his enemies. But amid the praise of his deeds is a note about his devotion: in every work of...
No. 2016 Sirach 31:1-16
Sirach reflects on the anxiety that riches bring. Wakefulness that comes from riches consumes the flesh, he says, and worry about them takes away sleep; wakeful anxiety drives away slumber. The rich man toils...
No. 2096 Sirach 5:1-15
Sirach turns to the use of the tongue and the consistency of our speech. Do not winnow with every wind, he warns, nor walk in every path; this is what the double-tongued sinner does. Be steadfast in your...
No. 2146 Sirach 25:17-26
This passage of Sirach speaks in the hard, culturally bound language of its ancient world, with sweeping and severe words about a wicked wife. Its harsh generalizations are shaped by their time and are not...
No. 2148 Sirach 6:17-32
Sirach urges his son to pursue wisdom, and he is honest that the pursuit is demanding. Come to wisdom as one who plows and sows, he says, and wait for her fruit; put your neck under her yoke, bear her bonds,...
No. 2196 Sirach 20:17-32
Among Sirach's sayings about speech comes a sharp warning about lying. A lie, he says, is a foul blot on a person; it will be continually in the mouth of the ignorant. He compares the liar unfavorably even to...
No. 2326 Sirach 26:1-16
This passage of Sirach speaks, in the manner of its ancient world, about wives, mingling harsh sayings shaped by their time with genuine praise of a good and faithful spouse. Its enduring wisdom is worth...
No. 2330 Sirach 21:17-28
Sirach draws a series of contrasts between the wise and the foolish, and several concern speech. A fool lifts up his voice with laughter, but a clever man barely smiles. And most pointedly: the heart of fools...
No. 2409 Sirach 33:1-16
Sirach reflects on how God orders his world, and reaches for the image every reader recognizes: as clay in the potter's hand, to shape as he pleases, so are we in the hand of the One who made us. The passage...
No. 2465 Sirach 13:1-16
Sirach offers hard-nosed wisdom about unequal friendships, especially with those who have wealth and standing to spare. He who touches pitch is defiled, he begins, and then dissects the false friendship of the...
No. 2500 Sirach 4:17-31
Sirach gives a stretch of blunt practical wisdom, and one distinction in it is worth pausing on: there is a shame that leads to sin, he says, and a shame that is glory and grace. Do not be ashamed to confess...
No. 2580 Sirach 18:1-16
Sirach begins by humbling us before a God whose works can never be traced out or measured, next to whom our few years are like a single drop drawn from the sea. And out of that greatness comes patience and...
No. 2612 Sirach 18:17-33
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...
No. 2620 Sirach 23:1-16
Sirach opens with a prayer that is really a request for internal discipline. O Lord, Father of my life, he prays, do not give me haughty eyes; turn evil desire away from me; let neither gluttony nor lust...
No. 2678 Sirach 48:1-16
Sirach's long roll call of the ancestors reaches Elijah, "the prophet like fire." The praise piles up: famine shut and opened by his word, fire called down three times, a dead man raised, the prophet himself...
No. 2716 Sirach 7:1-16
Ben Sira strings together a run of short commands on how to live cleanly and low to the ground. Do no evil and evil will not overtake you. Do not reach for a seat of honor from the king. Do not seek to be a...
No. 2717 Sirach 41:17-24
This is a list of things to be ashamed of, and it sounds strange to modern ears that treat shame as always damaging. Ben Sira thinks differently: a rightly aimed shame is a guardrail. Be ashamed of sexual sin...
No. 2765 Sirach 38:1-16
This is a strikingly balanced passage on sickness and healing. Honor the physician, Ben Sira says, for the Lord created him, and the medicines come from the earth God made; a sensible person will not despise...
No. 2806 Sirach 11:1-17
Ben Sira strings together a set of warnings against reading the surface of things. The wisdom of the lowly lifts his head to sit among the great. Do not praise a man for his good looks or despise him for his...
No. 2830 Sirach 8:1-19
Ben Sira offers a long run of shrewd, down-to-earth counsel. Do not pick a quarrel with someone stronger, richer, or louder than you; do not heap wood on an angry man's fire. Do not reproach a person who is...
No. 2927 Sirach 14:17-27
Ben Sira looks squarely at mortality. All flesh grows old like a garment, he says; generations fall like the leaves of a tree, one coming to an end as another is born, every work eventually rotting away and...
No. 3003 Sirach 6:1-16
Ben Sira gives a clear-eyed lesson on friendship. Sweet words multiply friends, he says, but do not trust in a hurry. Test a friend before you rely on him, for many are friends only for a season, companions at...
No. 3019 Sirach 38:17-34
Ben Sira first counsels measured mourning: weep bitterly for the dead a day or two, then be comforted, for grief let loose without limit harms the living and cannot help the one who is gone. Then he turns,...
No. 3031 Sirach 20:1-16
Ben Sira weighs the wisdom of knowing when to speak and when to keep silent. There is a rebuke that is untimely, he says, and a person wise enough to hold his tongue. One keeps silent and is found wise;...
No. 3044 Sirach 46:1-20
Ben Sira sings the praise of several heroes. Joshua, valiant successor of Moses, who brought Israel into its inheritance and for whom the sun stood still. Caleb, who with Joshua stood against the faithless...
No. 3051 Sirach 10:1-16
Ben Sira reflects on rulers and pride. A wise ruler orders his people well, and the government of the earth is in the Lord's hand; in due time he raises up the right person. But then he turns to what destroys...
No. 3063 Sirach 27:1-16
Ben Sira warns that many have sinned for the sake of profit, and that sin wedges itself, as a nail sticks fast between stones, right between buying and selling. He goes on to say that a person's true self is...
No. 3080 Sirach 22:18-27
Ben Sira turns to friendship, and he is realistic about how it is wounded and how it may be healed. Insults drive friends off as a thrown stone scatters birds. But if you have spoken sharply, even drawn a...
No. 3101 Sirach 33:17-33
Ben Sira advises keeping your independence in old age, not handing over your property or authority while you still live, and excelling in your work without staining your honor. Then he turns to servants, and...
No. 3102 Sirach 37:1-16
Ben Sira weighs friends and counselors with a clear eye. Every friend claims to be a friend, he says, but some are friends in name only, turning enemy in the day of trouble. And beware the counselor who...
No. 3107 Sirach 36:17-26
Ben Sira prays for God to hear his people, then reflects on discernment, how the mind tests truth from falsehood as the palate tastes food, and then turns at length to the gift of a good marriage. He who...
No. 3226 Sirach 47:17-25
Sirach's portrait of Solomon holds the great and the tragic together. His songs and proverbs and wisdom amazed the nations; he gathered gold like tin. And yet, Sirach says, he gave himself to women and stained...
No. 3247 Sirach 37:17-31
Sirach moves from the heart to the tongue to the table, and one theme runs through all of it: self-mastery. The tongue rules over good and evil, life and death; it can build up or destroy. A man may be clever,...
No. 3257 Sirach 40:17-30
Sirach runs through a long list of good things, kindness and a settled home, wine and music, wealth and strength, and after each he names something better. The refrain climbs step by step until it reaches its...
No. 3273 Sirach 25:1-16
Sirach opens with a picture of what is beautiful before God and people: kinfolk who live in harmony, neighbors who are friends, a husband and wife who walk together in agreement. These bonds of peace are a...
No. 3430 Sirach 28:17-26
Sirach warns of the terrible power of the tongue. A whip leaves a mark on the flesh, he says, but the stroke of the tongue breaks bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, yet more have fallen because...
No. 3456 Sirach 45:1-16
Sirach honors Moses and Aaron, two men God chose and set apart. Moses, meek and faithful, God brought near to hear his voice and gave the law face to face. And Aaron he clothed in glory, the robe and the...
No. 3483 Sirach 27:17-30
Sirach teaches that betraying a friend's confidence destroys the friendship beyond repair. A wound can be bound up, and after a quarrel there can be reconciliation, but the one who reveals secrets has lost his...
No. 3515 Sirach 17:17-32
Sirach holds together two great truths about God. First, God sees everything: all our works are as clear as the sun before him, our iniquities are not hidden from him, and he will repay. Nothing at all escapes...
No. 3518 Sirach 40:1-16
Sirach paints a sober picture of the human condition. A heavy yoke lies on everyone from the day they are born until the day they return to the earth, kings and paupers alike; anxiety and the fear of death...
No. 3619 Sirach 4:1-16
Sirach gives tender, practical instruction about the poor and the vulnerable. Do not make the hungry wait, or turn your face away from a poor man; do not turn your eye from one who asks; be a father to the...
No. 3700 Sirach 13:17-26
Sirach observes, with painful honesty, how differently the world treats the rich and the poor. When a rich man stumbles, many rush to support him, and his words are praised to the skies; when a humble man...
No. 3703 Sirach 26:17-29
Sirach names things that grieve his heart, and one is especially searching: a person who turns back from righteousness to sin. To watch someone who once walked in God's ways abandon them for wrongdoing is a...
No. 3721 Sirach 51:1-16
Sirach closes his book with a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance. He recalls a time of great danger, slander, threats, near death, when there was no human help at all, and how he remembered God's mercy,...
No. 3755 Sirach 36:1-16
This is a bold prayer for God to act, to make himself known where he seems hidden, and to gather and restore his scattered people. Have mercy on us, the prayer begins, and it asks God to show new signs, to be...
No. 3833 Sirach 23:17-28
This passage exposes a lie that people tell themselves when they sin in secret: who sees me? Darkness is around me, and the walls hide me; no one sees me. The person tempted to do wrong in hidden places...
No. 3856 Sirach 9:1-18
This chapter of Sirach is full of practical wisdom, and among its counsels one theme stands out: the company we keep shapes who we become. Do not forsake an old friend, it advises, for a new one is not his...
No. 3940 Sirach 17:1-16
Sirach reflects on the creation of humanity, and it is a portrait of remarkable dignity. God created human beings from the earth, and though he appointed them a set span of life, he gave them extraordinary...
No. 4015 Sirach 39:17-35
Sirach reflects on the works of God and reaches a settled conviction: all the works of the Lord are good, and he will supply every need in its time. Nothing God does is without purpose, and everything has its...
No. 4184 Sirach 10:17-31
Sirach reflects on honor, where it truly comes from, and it is not where the world usually looks. Human honor, he says, belongs to those who fear the Lord; the rich, the honored, and the poor alike find their...
No. 4200 Sirach 48:17-25
Sirach recalls the days of King Hezekiah, when the Assyrian army under Sennacherib invaded and his commander boasted arrogantly against Zion. The people's hearts and hands trembled; they were in anguish, like...
No. 4246 Sirach 28:1-16
Sirach presses a searching question: forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray. Does anyone nurse anger against another and yet expect healing from the...
No. 4261 Sirach 16:18-30
Sirach reflects on the greatness of God, before whom heaven and earth tremble when he draws near. And he makes a humbling observation about God's works: the majority of them are hidden, like a tempest no one...
No. 4265 Sirach 24:17-34
Wisdom, personified in this passage, issues an invitation: come to me, all you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. And she says something paradoxical about those who do: those who eat me will hunger...
No. 4289 Sirach 22:1-17
Amid its warnings about folly and sloth, this passage offers a memorable image of a steady heart. Like timber bound and fastened into a building, which no shaking will loosen, so a heart established on...