Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 2-6, 12-13, 16 City of God 1× 27
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 3 about?

Addressing duties within the household, the chapter commands children to honor father and mother, promising that whoever honors a parent atones for sins and stores up blessing. It then turns to humility, teaching that the greater a man is the more he should lower himself, for the LORD is glorified by the lowly and hides His works from the proud. A closing word commends almsgiving, likening charity that atones for sin to water that quenches a blazing fire. Each counsel binds ordinary conduct to reverence for God, the book's steady concern.

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 3
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 3

Sirach Chapter 3
3
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What is Sirach 3 about?

Addressing duties within the household, the chapter commands children to honor father and mother, promising that whoever honors a parent atones for sins and stores up blessing. It then turns to humility, teaching that the greater a man is the more he should lower himself, for the LORD is glorified by the lowly and hides His works from the proud. A closing word commends almsgiving, likening charity that atones for sin to water that quenches a blazing fire. Each counsel binds ordinary conduct to reverence for God, the book's steady concern.