Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 14 about?

Blessedness of a clear conscience opens the chapter, which calls happy the man not condemned by his own heart nor tripped up by his tongue. Ben Sira then addresses the right use of wealth, urging generosity toward oneself and others before death removes all opportunity, since the grave holds no enjoyment. The chapter closes by pronouncing blessed the man who meditates on wisdom, pursuing her like a hunter and camping beside her house. Right stewardship and diligent search for wisdom are joined to the fear of the LORD.

Historical backdrop

Ben Sira taught in Jerusalem around 180 BC, in the last calm before the storm. Judea had passed from Ptolemaic to Seleucid hands, Greek ways pressed in from every side, and the second temple still stood in the glory the high priest Simon had restored, the Simon whose splendor the book remembers. Within a generation Antiochus would defile that temple, and the grandson who carried the work to Egypt and turned it into Greek wrote in the aftermath, for the Jews of Alexandria.

The Church Fathers on Sirach 14
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

Sirach 14

Sirach Chapter 14
14
← Chapter 13 Chapter 15 →
What is Sirach 14 about?

Blessedness of a clear conscience opens the chapter, which calls happy the man not condemned by his own heart nor tripped up by his tongue. Ben Sira then addresses the right use of wealth, urging generosity toward oneself and others before death removes all opportunity, since the grave holds no enjoyment. The chapter closes by pronouncing blessed the man who meditates on wisdom, pursuing her like a hunter and camping beside her house. Right stewardship and diligent search for wisdom are joined to the fear of the LORD.