Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 3 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 14 Confession of Dositheus 1× 14 City of God 1× 17
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 15 about?

Continuing the praise of wisdom, the chapter promises that whoever fears the LORD and keeps the law will find her, and she will meet him like a mother and a bride. The heart of the chapter defends the justice of God against every excuse for sin: He made man free, set before him life and death, fire and water, and commanded no one to be ungodly. Whatever a man chooses will be given him, for God's eyes see all and He is never the author of sin. Human responsibility is affirmed plainly, guarding reverence from turning into complaint against God.

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 15
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 15

Sirach Chapter 15
15
← Chapter 14 Chapter 16 →
What is Sirach 15 about?

Continuing the praise of wisdom, the chapter promises that whoever fears the LORD and keeps the law will find her, and she will meet him like a mother and a bride. The heart of the chapter defends the justice of God against every excuse for sin: He made man free, set before him life and death, fire and water, and commanded no one to be ungodly. Whatever a man chooses will be given him, for God's eyes see all and He is never the author of sin. Human responsibility is affirmed plainly, guarding reverence from turning into complaint against God.