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The Christian theologian Ambrose uses Sirach as an authoritative source for teaching about friendship. Quoting its description of a faithful friend, he uses it to illustrate the kind of loyalty that maintains virtuous relationships.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 6:16
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
14 A faithful friend is a strong defense. He who has found him has found a treasure. 15 There is nothing that can be taken in exchange for a faithful friend. His excellency is beyond price. 16 A faithful friend is a life-saving medicine. Those who fear the Lord will find him. 17 He who fears the Lord directs his friendship properly; for as he is, so is his neighbor also. 18 My son, gather instruction from your youth up. Even when you have gray hair you will find wisdom.
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
"... As a second example of reception history, we can consider another oft-cited Sirach passage, the first poem on friendship (Sirach 6:5–17). Within Jewish tradition, the Babylonian Talmud cites a form of the admonition in Sirach 6:6: “Let those who seek your peace be many; reveal your confidence to one in a thousand” (b. Sanhedrin 100b). Several references to Sirach 6:5–17 occur within Christian literature from the late fourth century. Testimony to the friendship existing among the Cappadocian Fathers is evident in the oration, pronounced in 372 by Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 389), shortly after he was made bishop, in the presence of his two friends, Gregory of Nyssa and his brother Basil of Caesarea. Acknowledging the value of their friendship, the oration refers to Sirach 6:14–15 (Or. 11). Around the same time, Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), twice quotes Sirach 6:16, in association with other verses of Sirach on friendship, in its expanded Latin form: “A faithful friend is a medicine of life and immortality” (Off. 2:7 [37]). Another contemporary bishop, John Chrysostom (d. 407), refers to Sirach 6:14–16 to explain the extent of true friendship (Hom. 1 Thess.), while commenting on Paul’s tender treatment of his converts in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 2:7–8) ..."
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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