Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 29 about?

Money owed and money lent occupy Ben Sira here, as he urges generosity to a neighbor in need and patience with the poor, while granting that many refuse to lend from honest fear of being cheated. He warns soberly that standing surety for another has ruined many an upright man, so a person should help without being dragged down. The chapter then praises frugal self-sufficiency and the shelter of one's own roof over the bitterness of borrowing and being a guest from house to house, and it counts almsgiving as treasure laid up against calamity. Practical to the core, the counsel ties the handling of debt and charity to the reverent, ordered life the book commends.

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 29
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 29

Sirach Chapter 29
29
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What is Sirach 29 about?

Money owed and money lent occupy Ben Sira here, as he urges generosity to a neighbor in need and patience with the poor, while granting that many refuse to lend from honest fear of being cheated. He warns soberly that standing surety for another has ruined many an upright man, so a person should help without being dragged down. The chapter then praises frugal self-sufficiency and the shelter of one's own roof over the bitterness of borrowing and being a guest from house to house, and it counts almsgiving as treasure laid up against calamity. Practical to the core, the counsel ties the handling of debt and charity to the reverent, ordered life the book commends.