Texts in Conversation
Sirach teaches that a stubborn mind leads to ruin and compounds sin. The Christian theologian Augustine quotes this in the opening of the City of God, showing how he used it as an authoritative source of teaching and practice.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 3:26
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
26 A stubborn heart will do badly at the end. He who loves danger will perish in it. 27 A stubborn heart will be burdened with troubles. The sinner will heap sin upon sins. 28 The calamity of the proud has no healing, for a weed of wickedness has taken root in him. 29 The heart of the prudent will understand a proverb. A wise man desires the ear of a listener.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 1.27
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
Why does any person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose himself to them, when he has the power to rid himself of them all so easily, and when it is written, “He who loves danger shall fall into it?” Why does he love, or at least face, so many serious dangers, by remaining in this life from which he may legitimately depart?
Date: 426 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Within early Christianity, the Letter of Barnabas echoes Sirach 5:12–14 about the danger of a double tongue, as well as the warning in Sirach 4:31 against an ungenerous attitude (Barnabas 19:7–9). Origen (d. 254 ce) quotes Ben Sira as scriptural when commenting on several Old Testament passages (Genesis 12:5; Joshua 15:6; Jeremiah 16:6). Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 CE) quotes about eighty Sirach verses, while John Chrysostom (d. 407 CE) includes about three hundred citations from the book. Augustine (d. 430 CE) not only cites Sirach about 300x, but also preached sermons on Sirach passages. Rabanus Maurus (d. 856 CE), abbot of Fulda in Germany, composed the earliest surviving Latin commentary on Sirach ..."
Jeremy Corley, “Sirach,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha, ed. Gerbern S. Oegema (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 284–305.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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