Texts in Conversation
Sirach warns that food offered to the dead is wasted, reflecting futility in misplaced rituals. The Letter of Jeremiah portrays sacrifices offered to idols in the same way, both condemning empty offerings that lack any true recipient.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Letter of Jeremiah 1:27
Deuterocanon
25 Things in which there is no breath are bought at any cost. 26 Having no feet, they are carried upon shoulders. By this, they declare to men that they are worth nothing. Those who serve them are also ashamed, 27 for if they fall to the ground at any time, they can’t rise up again by themselves. If they are bowed down, they can’t make themselves straight; but the offerings are set before them, as if they were dead men. 28 And the things that are sacrificed to them, their priests sell and spend. In like manner, their wives also lay up part of it in salt; but to the poor and to the powerless they give none of it. 29 The menstruating woman and the woman in childbirth touch their sacrifices, knowing therefore by these things that they are no gods. Don’t fear them.
Date: 300–101 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Sirach 30:18
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
16 There is no wealth better than health of body. There is no gladness above the joy of the heart. 17 Death is better than a bitter life, and eternal rest than a continual sickness. 18 Good things poured out upon a mouth that is closed are like food offerings laid upon a grave. 19 What does an offering profit an idol? For it can’t eat or smell. So is he who is punished by the Lord, 20 seeing with his eyes and groaning, like a eunuch embracing a virgin and groaning.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... there are likely numerous references to cult of the dead activities in Trito-Isaiah. Those who are described in Isaiah 65:3 as “provoking [YHWH] to his face continually” are specifically charged with “sitting in tombs and spending the night among rocks.” Similar practices are probably in view in chapter 57, which refers to both child sacrifice (verse 5) and Molek (verse 9); particularly if the difficult word in verse 6 is related to the dead (“Your portion is with the perished of the wadi ...”), the passage is clearly condemning death cults. Francesca Stavrakopoulou has further argued that the gardens condemned in Isaiah 65:3–5, 66:17 and 1:29–30 were mortuary gardens and thus also manifestations of cults of the dead. And of course, the book ends with the unforgettable image of “the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against [YHWH]; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” This nascent image of hell is the apotheosis of the “aversion therapy” technique that was pioneered centuries earlier by Isaiah himself. The precise significance of many of these later instances of the tradition are contested; they deserve and have generated fairly extensive scholarship, which cannot be summarized here. It is clear enough that cults of the dead continued to be a major preoccupation in the postexilic period (Letter of Jeremiah 27; Sirach 30:18; Tobit 4:17; Note also Baruch 3:10-11) ..."
Christopher B. Hays, Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 360.
* 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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