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Sirach reflects on the inevitability of death, portraying human life as fleeting and subject to decay. The Christian theologian Augustine later cites this passage in his teaching, showing how he used the Jewish wisdom tradition authoritatively.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 14:17
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
15 Won’t you leave your labors to another, and your toils be divided by lot? 16 Give, take, and treat yourself well, because there is no seeking of luxury in Hades. 17 All flesh grows old like a garment, for the covenant from the beginning is, “You must die!” 18 Like the leaves flourishing on a thick tree, some it sheds, and some grow, so also are the generations of flesh and blood: one comes to an end and another is born. 19 Every work rots and falls away, and its builder will depart with it.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 16.27
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
For the first covenant, which was made with the first man, is just this: “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:17 So it is written in the book called Ecclesiasticus, “All flesh grows old like a garment. For the covenant from the beginning is, You shall die the death.” Sirach 15:17 Now, as the law was more plainly given afterward, and the apostle says, “Where there is no law, there is no transgression,” Romans 4:15 on what supposition is what is said in the psalm true, “I counted all the sinners of the earth transgressors,” except that all who are held liable for any sin are accused of transgressing some law?
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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