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 22 about?

Sloth and folly open the chapter, which likens the lazy man to a filthy stone and mourns that grief for a fool lasts a lifetime while grief for the dead soon fades. Ben Sira reflects on the sorrow of raising undisciplined children and the futility of trying to instruct the senseless. He then turns to friendship, urging the reader to stand by a friend and not be ashamed to defend him, while naming the wounds that end a friendship: reproach, disclosed secrets, and a treacherous blow. The chapter ends with a prayer for a guard over the lips and heart, that the reader may not fall through his own words.

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 22
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 22

Sirach Chapter 22
22
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What is Sirach 22 about?

Sloth and folly open the chapter, which likens the lazy man to a filthy stone and mourns that grief for a fool lasts a lifetime while grief for the dead soon fades. Ben Sira reflects on the sorrow of raising undisciplined children and the futility of trying to instruct the senseless. He then turns to friendship, urging the reader to stand by a friend and not be ashamed to defend him, while naming the wounds that end a friendship: reproach, disclosed secrets, and a treacherous blow. The chapter ends with a prayer for a guard over the lips and heart, that the reader may not fall through his own words.