Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 1-2 City of God 3× 12, 24
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 30 about?

Fathers and sons occupy the first half, where Ben Sira teaches that the one who loves his son disciplines him diligently, since a pampered child grows willful as an unbroken horse turns stubborn. He then turns to the body and the spirit, declaring gladness of heart to be the very life of a man and jealousy and anxiety a wasting of one's days. Better a poor man sound in body, he says, than a wealthy man tormented by illness, for health and a cheerful heart outweigh gold. The chapter presses the book's concern for well-ordered living, showing that the fear of the Lord shapes both the raising of children and the keeping of one's own soul from needless grief.

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 30
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 30

Sirach Chapter 30
30
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What is Sirach 30 about?

Fathers and sons occupy the first half, where Ben Sira teaches that the one who loves his son disciplines him diligently, since a pampered child grows willful as an unbroken horse turns stubborn. He then turns to the body and the spirit, declaring gladness of heart to be the very life of a man and jealousy and anxiety a wasting of one's days. Better a poor man sound in body, he says, than a wealthy man tormented by illness, for health and a cheerful heart outweigh gold. The chapter presses the book's concern for well-ordered living, showing that the fear of the Lord shapes both the raising of children and the keeping of one's own soul from needless grief.