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The Christian theologian Ambrose uses Sirach as an authoritative source to teach about friendship, drawing on its call to loyalty to define the ethical boundaries that preserve trust and community.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 22:25
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
23 Gain trust with your neighbor in his poverty, that in his prosperity you may have gladness. Stay steadfast to him in the time of his affliction, that you may be heir with him in his inheritance. 24 Before fire is the vapor and smoke of a furnace, so insults precede bloodshed. 25 I won’t be ashamed to shelter a friend. I won’t hide myself from his face. 26 If any evil happens to me because of him, everyone who hears it will beware of him. 27 Who will set a watch over my mouth, and a seal of shrewdness upon my lips, that I may not fall from it, and that my tongue may not destroy me?
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Early Christian
37 It gives a very great impetus to mutual love if one shows love in return to those who love us and proves that one does not love them less than oneself is loved, especially if one shows it by the proofs that a faithful friendship gives. What is so likely to win favour as gratitude? What more natural than to love one who loves us? What so implanted and so impressed on men's feelings as the wish to let another, by whom we want to be loved, know that we love him? Well does the wise man say: Lose your money for your brother and your friend. And again: I will not be ashamed to defend a friend, neither will I hide myself from him. If, indeed, the words in Ecclesiasticus testify that the medicine of life and immortality is in a friend; yet none has ever doubted that it is in love that our best defense lies. As the Apostle says: It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; love never fails.
Date: 390–395 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The Book of Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] has been honored still more highly among the Christians, being cited in the Epistle of James (Edersheim, in Wace, 'Apocrypha,' p. 21), the Didache (4:5), and the Epistle of Barnabas (19:9), while Clement of Alexandria and Origen quote from it repeatedly, as from a γραφή, or holy book. In the Western Church, Cyprian frequently appeals to it in his 'Testimonia,' as does Ambrose in the greater number of his writings. In like manner the Catalogue of Cheltenham, Damasus I., the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), Pope Innocent I., the second Council of Carthage (419), and Augustine all regard it as a canonical book. This is contrary, however, to the opinions of the Council of Laodicea, of Jerome, and of Rufinus of Aquileia, which authorities rank it among the ecclesiastical books. It was finally declared canonical by the Council of Trent; and the favor with which the Church has always regarded it has preserved it in its entirety. ..."
Crawford Howell Toy, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach (Jewish Encyclopedia, 2021), 1–10.
* 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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