Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 23 about?

Ben Sira opens with a prayer to the Lord, Father and Master of his life, asking to be guarded from a proud look, from the sins of the lips, and from the appetites that overthrow a man. From that plea he turns to the discipline of speech, warning against the reckless habit of oaths and the swearing of the divine Name, and against coarse and filthy talk that shames the undisciplined mouth. He then exposes the sins of the flesh, the man who breaks faith with his own marriage bed and the wife who bears children by another, reminding the reader that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun and see every hidden way. Set among Ben Sira's instructions to the faithful in Jerusalem, the chapter presses the fear of the Lord into the most private corners of desire and speech.

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 23
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 23

Sirach Chapter 23
23
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What is Sirach 23 about?

Ben Sira opens with a prayer to the Lord, Father and Master of his life, asking to be guarded from a proud look, from the sins of the lips, and from the appetites that overthrow a man. From that plea he turns to the discipline of speech, warning against the reckless habit of oaths and the swearing of the divine Name, and against coarse and filthy talk that shames the undisciplined mouth. He then exposes the sins of the flesh, the man who breaks faith with his own marriage bed and the wife who bears children by another, reminding the reader that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun and see every hidden way. Set among Ben Sira's instructions to the faithful in Jerusalem, the chapter presses the fear of the Lord into the most private corners of desire and speech.