Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
City of God 2× 13, 17 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1× 27-28
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Sirach 7 about?

A string of household and civic precepts fills the chapter: do no evil, seek no office beyond your strength, and sin not against the assembly. Ben Sira counsels honor for parents and priests, faithfulness to a good wife, careful discipline of children, and just treatment of servants. He commands mercy toward the sick and the mourning, and closes by urging the reader to remember the end of life in all that he does. Framed by the fear of the LORD, these directions shape daily duty into a form of worship.

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 7
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 7

Sirach Chapter 7
7
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What is Sirach 7 about?

A string of household and civic precepts fills the chapter: do no evil, seek no office beyond your strength, and sin not against the assembly. Ben Sira counsels honor for parents and priests, faithfulness to a good wife, careful discipline of children, and just treatment of servants. He commands mercy toward the sick and the mourning, and closes by urging the reader to remember the end of life in all that he does. Framed by the fear of the LORD, these directions shape daily duty into a form of worship.