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 25 about?

Ben Sira gathers sayings on the things that gladden and grieve the heart, praising the harmony of brothers, the friendship of neighbors, and the accord of husband and wife, while naming the proud pauper, the wealthy liar, and the aged adulterer as those his soul cannot bear. He commends the wisdom of the old and the fear of the Lord as crowning every good thing. The greater part of the chapter, however, is a stark and unsparing lament over the wicked wife, judging any wound easier to endure than a wound of the heart and declaring that sin began with a woman and through her all die. Reflecting the sharp conventions of its age, the passage aims, in the manner of Proverbs, to warn the household against a bitter home and to prize a life ordered by the fear of the Lord.

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 25
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 25

Sirach Chapter 25
25
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What is Sirach 25 about?

Ben Sira gathers sayings on the things that gladden and grieve the heart, praising the harmony of brothers, the friendship of neighbors, and the accord of husband and wife, while naming the proud pauper, the wealthy liar, and the aged adulterer as those his soul cannot bear. He commends the wisdom of the old and the fear of the Lord as crowning every good thing. The greater part of the chapter, however, is a stark and unsparing lament over the wicked wife, judging any wound easier to endure than a wound of the heart and declaring that sin began with a woman and through her all die. Reflecting the sharp conventions of its age, the passage aims, in the manner of Proverbs, to warn the household against a bitter home and to prize a life ordered by the fear of the Lord.