Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 31 about?

Wealth and its sleepless cares open the chapter, as Ben Sira observes that the love of gold leads many astray and blesses the rare wealthy man found blameless who did not run after it. He then moves to the table, teaching restraint among guests: do not reach greedily for every dish, judge your neighbor's appetite by your own, and eat like a mannerly man rather than a glutton. Wine receives balanced counsel, a gladness to the heart when taken in season and measure, but bitterness, brawling, and ruin when drunk to excess. Addressed to men at feast and market, the chapter keeps the book's steady lesson that temperance and the fear of the Lord guard a man among riches and pleasures.

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 31
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 31

Sirach Chapter 31
31
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What is Sirach 31 about?

Wealth and its sleepless cares open the chapter, as Ben Sira observes that the love of gold leads many astray and blesses the rare wealthy man found blameless who did not run after it. He then moves to the table, teaching restraint among guests: do not reach greedily for every dish, judge your neighbor's appetite by your own, and eat like a mannerly man rather than a glutton. Wine receives balanced counsel, a gladness to the heart when taken in season and measure, but bitterness, brawling, and ruin when drunk to excess. Addressed to men at feast and market, the chapter keeps the book's steady lesson that temperance and the fear of the Lord guard a man among riches and pleasures.