Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 51 about?

A personal close follows the long remembrance, returning the book to its true subject. Jesus son of Sirach offers a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from slander, from peril, and from death, recounting how he cried to the LORD and was heard. An acrostic poem then tells how he sought wisdom from his youth, prayed for her and pursued her, and found her, ending with an open invitation to the unlearned to lodge in the house of instruction, take up wisdom's yoke, and receive her without money. Closing as it began with the pursuit of wisdom, the book presents the fear of the LORD and the labor after understanding as both the reward and the aim of all its instruction.

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 51
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 51

Sirach Chapter 51
51
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What is Sirach 51 about?

A personal close follows the long remembrance, returning the book to its true subject. Jesus son of Sirach offers a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from slander, from peril, and from death, recounting how he cried to the LORD and was heard. An acrostic poem then tells how he sought wisdom from his youth, prayed for her and pursued her, and found her, ending with an open invitation to the unlearned to lodge in the house of instruction, take up wisdom's yoke, and receive her without money. Closing as it began with the pursuit of wisdom, the book presents the fear of the LORD and the labor after understanding as both the reward and the aim of all its instruction.