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Sirach 36 uses language from Ezekiel 28, such as the description of divine judgment against foreign cities like Sidon. Sirach reshapes Ezekiel to express hope for divine intervention against its own enemies.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Ezekiel 28:22
Hebrew Bible
21 “Son of man, turn toward Sidon and prophesy against it. 22 Say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “Look, I am against you, Sidon, and I will magnify myself in your midst. Then they will know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments on her and reveal my sovereign power in her. 23 I will send a plague into the city and bloodshed into its streets; the slain will fall within it, by the sword that attacks it from every side. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
Date: 600–501 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Sirach 36:4
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)
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Notes and References
"... The parallels between Sirach 36:4 and Ezekiel 28:22 are not so striking as are those between Sirach 36:4 and other Ezekiel passages ... First of all, the prepositional phrase is not found in Ezekiel 28:22. Moreover, instead of an instrumental, the prepositional phrase occurs, which cannot be construed as instrumental. Nonetheless, it seems likely that the author’s inspiration for both halves of the bicolon in Sirach 36:4 derives from these Ezekiel passages. And since most of the Ezekiel passages occur in a context of Israel’s restoration after a period of punishment at the hands of foreigners, the author of the prayer also likely imagined the domination of the Judeans in his day as a kind of divine punishment for Israel’s sins ..."
Greg Schmidt Goering, Wisdom’s Root Revealed: Ben Sira and the Election of Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 218.
* 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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