Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 32 about?

Conduct at the feast continues, where Ben Sira instructs the one made master of the table to care for the guests before himself and to take the lowest place rather than the highest. Elders may speak, but with knowledge and brevity, and the young should hold their tongues unless twice pressed, leaving in good time and not lingering. He then rises from the banquet hall to the whole of life, teaching that the one who fears the Lord accepts correction, does nothing without counsel, and considers the end of every action. Whoever keeps the law guards his own soul, and whoever trusts the Lord will not be put to shame, the book's aim set plainly before the reader.

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 32
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 32

Sirach Chapter 32
32
← Chapter 31 Chapter 33 →
What is Sirach 32 about?

Conduct at the feast continues, where Ben Sira instructs the one made master of the table to care for the guests before himself and to take the lowest place rather than the highest. Elders may speak, but with knowledge and brevity, and the young should hold their tongues unless twice pressed, leaving in good time and not lingering. He then rises from the banquet hall to the whole of life, teaching that the one who fears the Lord accepts correction, does nothing without counsel, and considers the end of every action. Whoever keeps the law guards his own soul, and whoever trusts the Lord will not be put to shame, the book's aim set plainly before the reader.