Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 1 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 22
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 17 about?

God's making of man opens the chapter, which recounts how the LORD formed him from earth, granted him a fixed span of days, authority over the creatures, and knowledge of good and evil. He set His covenant and law before them and kept His eye upon their hearts. Ben Sira then issues a call to repentance, urging the reader to turn from sin to the LORD while life remains, for the dead can no longer give thanks. The mercy of God and the brevity of life together summon the living to return to Him.

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 17
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 17

Sirach Chapter 17
17
← Chapter 16 Chapter 18 →
What is Sirach 17 about?

God's making of man opens the chapter, which recounts how the LORD formed him from earth, granted him a fixed span of days, authority over the creatures, and knowledge of good and evil. He set His covenant and law before them and kept His eye upon their hearts. Ben Sira then issues a call to repentance, urging the reader to turn from sin to the LORD while life remains, for the dead can no longer give thanks. The mercy of God and the brevity of life together summon the living to return to Him.