Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
City of God 1× 1 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 28
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 21 about?

Flight from sin as from a serpent opens the chapter, which likens transgression to a lion's teeth and a two-edged sword that destroys the soul. Ben Sira sets the prayer of the humble against the ruin awaiting the proud, whose house will be pulled down. He draws repeated contrasts between the fool, whose talk is a burden and whose heart is on his lips, and the wise, whose words are weighed and whose knowledge overflows like a fountain. The fear of the LORD is shown as the dividing line between the two ways.

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 21
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 21

Sirach Chapter 21
21
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What is Sirach 21 about?

Flight from sin as from a serpent opens the chapter, which likens transgression to a lion's teeth and a two-edged sword that destroys the soul. Ben Sira sets the prayer of the humble against the ruin awaiting the proud, whose house will be pulled down. He draws repeated contrasts between the fool, whose talk is a burden and whose heart is on his lips, and the wise, whose words are weighed and whose knowledge overflows like a fountain. The fear of the LORD is shown as the dividing line between the two ways.