Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 1 ▾
City of God 1× 1
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 40 about?

A heavy yoke lies on the children of Adam from the day they leave the womb, Ben Sira observes, opening with the anxieties, fears, and sleepless nights that burden every life until death gathers all. Against this weight he sets a string of comforts and comparisons, calling the fear of the Lord a garden of blessing, and judging health, a good wife, and above all reverence for God to be better than wine, wealth, or strength. He ranks the goods of life so that the fear of the Lord stands over them all, and counts the beggar's life more bitter than death. Sober yet steadying, the chapter holds the book's course, teaching that a life anchored in the fear of the Lord outlasts every trouble.

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 40
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 40

Sirach Chapter 40
40
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What is Sirach 40 about?

A heavy yoke lies on the children of Adam from the day they leave the womb, Ben Sira observes, opening with the anxieties, fears, and sleepless nights that burden every life until death gathers all. Against this weight he sets a string of comforts and comparisons, calling the fear of the Lord a garden of blessing, and judging health, a good wife, and above all reverence for God to be better than wine, wealth, or strength. He ranks the goods of life so that the fear of the Lord stands over them all, and counts the beggar's life more bitter than death. Sober yet steadying, the chapter holds the book's course, teaching that a life anchored in the fear of the Lord outlasts every trouble.