Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
City of God 1× 1 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 11
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 36 about?

A cry for the whole nation opens the chapter, as Ben Sira prays that the God of all would have mercy on His people, gather the scattered tribes of Jacob, and fill Zion with the celebration of His mighty deeds against the oppressor. The prayer gives way to sayings on discernment: as the palate tastes and distinguishes foods, so a discerning mind tests words and weighs the false against the true. He closes by counseling a man to acquire a good wife as his best possession and surest help, for a man without a home wanders restlessly. Joining supplication for Israel to counsel for the individual, the chapter keeps the book's aim of ordering both the nation's hope and the household under the fear of the Lord.

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 36
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 36

Sirach Chapter 36
36
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What is Sirach 36 about?

A cry for the whole nation opens the chapter, as Ben Sira prays that the God of all would have mercy on His people, gather the scattered tribes of Jacob, and fill Zion with the celebration of His mighty deeds against the oppressor. The prayer gives way to sayings on discernment: as the palate tastes and distinguishes foods, so a discerning mind tests words and weighs the false against the true. He closes by counseling a man to acquire a good wife as his best possession and surest help, for a man without a home wanders restlessly. Joining supplication for Israel to counsel for the individual, the chapter keeps the book's aim of ordering both the nation's hope and the household under the fear of the Lord.