Texts in Conversation
Sirach 36 opens with a prayer for God to show mercy and reveal his power to the nations, portraying history as a stage for divine justice. The Christian theologian Augustine quotes this, showing how it was used as an authoritative source for teaching.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 36:1
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
1 Have mercy upon us, O Lord the God of all, and look at us with favor; 2 and send your fear upon all the nations. 3 Lift up your hand against the foreign nations and let them see your mighty power. 4 As you showed your holiness in us before them, so be magnified in them before us. 5 Let them know you, as we also have known you, that there is no God but only you, O God.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 17.20
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
Let us examine him with insult and torture, so that we may know his reverence, and test his patience. Let us condemn him to the most shameful death; for by His own sayings He shall be respected. These things they devised, and were mistaken; for their own malice has quite blinded them.” But in Ecclesiasticus the future faith of the nations is predicted in this manner: “Have mercy on us, God, Ruler of all, and send Your fear on all the nations: lift up Your hand over the strange nations, and let them see Your power. As You were sanctified in us before them, so be sanctified in them before us, and let them acknowledge You, as we also have acknowledged You; for there is no God besides You, Lord.”
Date: 426 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Search:
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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
User Comments
,