Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 1 ▾
City of God 1× 3
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 24 about?

Wisdom lifts her own voice in the assembly of the Most High, declaring that she came forth from His mouth and covered the earth like a mist before seeking a resting place among the nations. Commanded by the Creator to pitch her tent in Jacob, she takes root in an honored people and flourishes in Zion like cedar and palm, vine and fragrant spice, inviting all who desire her to eat and drink and hunger still for more. Ben Sira then makes his central identification: this Wisdom is the book of the covenant, the law that Moses commanded, overflowing like the great rivers of Eden and the Jordan and the Nile. As the high point of the book's teaching, the chapter roots the fear of the Lord in the Torah given to Israel, so that to seek Wisdom is to keep the law.

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 24
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 24

Sirach Chapter 24
24
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What is Sirach 24 about?

Wisdom lifts her own voice in the assembly of the Most High, declaring that she came forth from His mouth and covered the earth like a mist before seeking a resting place among the nations. Commanded by the Creator to pitch her tent in Jacob, she takes root in an honored people and flourishes in Zion like cedar and palm, vine and fragrant spice, inviting all who desire her to eat and drink and hunger still for more. Ben Sira then makes his central identification: this Wisdom is the book of the covenant, the law that Moses commanded, overflowing like the great rivers of Eden and the Jordan and the Nile. As the high point of the book's teaching, the chapter roots the fear of the Lord in the Torah given to Israel, so that to seek Wisdom is to keep the law.