Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 38 about?

Sickness and its remedies open the chapter, as Ben Sira honors the physician as one the Lord created and the medicines He brought forth from the earth, urging the sick to pray and then let the doctor do his work. He counsels measured mourning for the dead, to weep bitterly and keep the days of grief, but not to be consumed, remembering that the same end awaits the living. He then surveys the crafts: the farmer, smith, potter, and engraver each sustain the city by their skill, yet cannot sit as judges or teach the law. Set against them, the scribe who gives himself to the law of the Most High attains wisdom, the vocation the book most exalts 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 38
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 38

Sirach Chapter 38
38
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What is Sirach 38 about?

Sickness and its remedies open the chapter, as Ben Sira honors the physician as one the Lord created and the medicines He brought forth from the earth, urging the sick to pray and then let the doctor do his work. He counsels measured mourning for the dead, to weep bitterly and keep the days of grief, but not to be consumed, remembering that the same end awaits the living. He then surveys the crafts: the farmer, smith, potter, and engraver each sustain the city by their skill, yet cannot sit as judges or teach the law. Set against them, the scribe who gives himself to the law of the Most High attains wisdom, the vocation the book most exalts under the fear of the Lord.