Texts in Conversation
Sirach urges those who fear God to wait patiently for his mercy, connecting faith and endurance. The Christian theologian Augustine echoes this in the City of God, showing how he uses it as an authoritative source for teaching.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 2:7
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
5 For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. 6 Put your trust in him, and he will help you. Make your ways straight, and set your hope on him. 7 All you who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy. Don’t turn aside, lest you fall. 8 All you who fear the Lord, put your trust in him, and your reward will not fail. 9 All you who fear the Lord, hope for good things, and for eternal gladness and mercy.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 20.10
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
Romans 6:4 So, too, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. Ephesians 5:14 ” As to what they say about nothing being able to rise again but what falls, from which they conclude that resurrection belongs to bodies only, and not to souls, because bodies fall, why do they make nothing of the words, “You who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy; and do not turn aside, or you will fall;” and “To his own Master he stands or falls;” Romans 14:4 and “Whoever thinks he stands, let him take care that he does not fall?” 1 Corinthians 10:12 For I suppose this fall that we are to guard against is a fall of the soul, not of the body. If, then, rising again belongs to things that fall, and souls fall, it must be admitted that souls also rise again.
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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