Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 19 about?

Small failings and loose speech occupy the chapter, which warns that the drunkard and the careless will come to poverty, and that whoever despises small matters will fall little by little. Ben Sira counsels the reader to let an overheard word die with him rather than repeat it, since a fool cannot hold anything in. He distinguishes true wisdom, joined to the fear of the LORD, from the mere cleverness of the wicked, and teaches how to question a friend before believing a report or rebuking him. Guarded speech and honest reproof are set forth as fruits of real understanding.

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 19
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 19

Sirach Chapter 19
19
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What is Sirach 19 about?

Small failings and loose speech occupy the chapter, which warns that the drunkard and the careless will come to poverty, and that whoever despises small matters will fall little by little. Ben Sira counsels the reader to let an overheard word die with him rather than repeat it, since a fool cannot hold anything in. He distinguishes true wisdom, joined to the fear of the LORD, from the mere cleverness of the wicked, and teaches how to question a friend before believing a report or rebuking him. Guarded speech and honest reproof are set forth as fruits of real understanding.