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Jesus Ben Sira

Sirach

Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus

About this book

Faithfulness in Trials

Chapter 2

1 My son, if you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for testing.⁠ 2 Set your heart right and endure steadily. Do not be hasty in a time of disaster. 3 Cling to him, and do not leave him, so that you may prosper at the end. 4 Accept whatever is brought on you, and be patient when you suffer humiliation.⁠ 5 For gold is tested in the fire, and people who are acceptable to God in the furnace of humiliation.⁠ 6 Put your trust in him, and he will help you. Make your ways straight, and set your hope on him.

Trust in God’s Mercy

7 All you who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy. Do not turn aside, so that you do not fall.⁠ 8 All you who fear the Lord, put your trust in him, and your reward will not fail. 9 All you who fear the Lord, hope for good things, and for eternal gladness and mercy. 10 Look at the generations of the past and see. Who ever put their trust in the Lord, and was put to shame? Or who continued to fear him and was abandoned? Or who called on him and was neglected? 11 For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy. He forgives sins and saves in time of distress.⁠

Warnings against Faithlessness

12 How terrible for fearful hearts, to powerless hands, and to the sinner who follows two paths! 13 How terrible for the fainthearted! For they do not believe, so they will not be protected. 14 How terrible for you who have lost your patience! And what will you all do when the Lord comes to you?

Those Who Fear the Lord

15 Those who fear the Lord will not disobey his words. Those who love him will keep his ways. 16 Those who fear the Lord will seek his good pleasure. Those who love him will be filled with the law. 17 Those who fear the Lord will prepare their hearts, and will humble their souls in his sight. 18 We will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of people, for his mercy is as great as his majesty.

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Texts in conversation

Compare Jesus Ben Sira, Sirach 2:7 and Augustine, City of God 20.10

Deuterocanon · Early Christian

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Summary

Sirach urges those who fear God to wait patiently for his mercy, connecting faith and endurance. The Christian theologian Augustine echoes this in the City of God, showing how he uses it as an authoritative source for teaching.

Passages

Jesus Ben Sira, Sirach 2:7

Deuterocanon · Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
5 For gold is tested in the fire,
and people who are acceptable to God in the furnace of humiliation. 6 Put your trust in him, and he will help you.
Make your ways straight, and set your hope on him. 7 All you who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy.
Do not turn aside, so that you do not fall. 8 All you who fear the Lord, put your trust in him,
and your reward will not fail. 9 All you who fear the Lord, hope for good things,
and for eternal gladness and mercy.
195–175 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jesus Ben Sira, Sirach

Augustine, City of God 20.10

Early Christian · On the City of God Against the Pagans
Romans 6:4 So, too, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. Ephesians 5:14 ” As to what they say about nothing being able to rise again but what falls, from which they conclude that resurrection belongs to bodies only, and not to souls, because bodies fall, why do they make nothing of the words, “You who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy; and do not turn aside, or you will fall;” and “To his own Master he stands or falls;” Romans 14:4 and “Whoever thinks he stands, let him take care that he does not fall?” 1 Corinthians 10:12 For I suppose this fall that we are to guard against is a fall of the soul, not of the body. If, then, rising again belongs to things that fall, and souls fall, it must be admitted that souls also rise again.
426 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Augustine, City of God 20

References

"... Within early Christianity, the Letter of Barnabas echoes Sirach 5:12–14 about the danger of a double tongue, as well as the warning in Sirach 4:31 against an ungenerous attitude (Barnabas 19:7–9). Origen (d. 254 ce) quotes Ben Sira as scriptural when commenting on several Old Testament passages (Genesis 12:5; Joshua 15:6; Jeremiah 16:6). Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 CE) quotes about eighty Sirach verses, while John Chrysostom (d. 407 CE) includes about three hundred citations from the book. Augustine (d. 430 CE) not only cites Sirach about 300x, but also preached sermons on Sirach passages. Rabanus Maurus (d. 856 CE), abbot of Fulda in Germany, composed the earliest surviving Latin commentary on Sirach ..."
Jeremy Corley, “Sirach,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha, ed. Gerbern S. Oegema (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 284–305.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Jesus Ben Sira, Sirach 2:7 and Augustine, City of God 20.10

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