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 42 about?

The catalogue of shame carries over, as Ben Sira lists what a man should not be ashamed of, the law, honest accounts, the discipline of children, and what he must guard, such as betraying secrets or turning flatterer. He then voices the anxious watch a father keeps over a daughter, in words as severe as the customs of his day, before turning upward to the glory of God in creation. The heavens, sun, moon, and stars display their Maker's order, all things made in pairs, one answering another, and nothing He fashioned is incomplete. Lifting the reader from household cares to the wonder of the Creator, the chapter renews the fear of the Lord before the God who sees all and from whom nothing is hidden.

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 42
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 42

Sirach Chapter 42
42
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What is Sirach 42 about?

The catalogue of shame carries over, as Ben Sira lists what a man should not be ashamed of, the law, honest accounts, the discipline of children, and what he must guard, such as betraying secrets or turning flatterer. He then voices the anxious watch a father keeps over a daughter, in words as severe as the customs of his day, before turning upward to the glory of God in creation. The heavens, sun, moon, and stars display their Maker's order, all things made in pairs, one answering another, and nothing He fashioned is incomplete. Lifting the reader from household cares to the wonder of the Creator, the chapter renews the fear of the Lord before the God who sees all and from whom nothing is hidden.