Texts in Conversation
Proverbs 18 describes the virtue of a rare friend who stays closer than a brother. Sirach reshapes and inverts that statement into a warning, describing friends who share your table but vanish the moment trouble comes.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Proverbs 18:24
Hebrew Bible
21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love its use will eat its fruit. 22 The one who has found a wife has found what goodness is and obtained a delightful gift from the Lord. 23 A poor person makes supplications, but a rich man answers harshly. 24 There are companions who harm one another, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Sirach 6:10
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
8 For there are friends who are such when it suits them, but they will not stand by you in time of trouble. 9 And there are friends who change into enemies, and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace. 10 And there are friends who sit at your table, but they will not stand by you in time of trouble. 11 When you are prosperous, they become your second self, and lord it over your servants;
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Notes and References
... Sirach 6:5-17 makes a threefold contrast between a disloyal companion (6:8-10) and a faithful friend (6:14-16). Whereas “there is a friend” (6:8-10) who will abandon you, there is also a “faithful friend” (6:14-16). Here Ben Sira’s phrases are borrowed from two aphorisms in the Book of Proverbs, but interestingly he reverses the sense of each. Whereas Proverbs 18:24 employs the phrase “there is a friend” in a positive sense (some friends may become closer than brothers), Sirach 6:8-10 uses the same phrase in a negative sense (some friends disappear in tough times). There is a friend sticking closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24). There is a friend, a table partner, but he will not be found on a day of adversity (Sirach 6:10 Hebrew manuscript A). ...
Corley, Jeremy
"An Intertextual Study of Proverbs and Ben Sira" in Corley, Jeremy; Skemp, Vincent (ed.) Intertextual Studies in Ben Sira and Tobit: Essays in Honor of Alexander A. Di Lella, O.F.M.
(p. 173) The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2005
* 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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