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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 2:8 and Colossians 3:25

Deuterocanon · New Testament

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Summary

Colossians echoes wisdom traditions like Sirach that connect the fear of God with the promise of reward. Sirach uses the hope of reward to teach endurance, and Colossians uses similar language to teach endurance in good works.

Passages

Jesus Ben Sira, Sirach 2:8

Deuterocanon · Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
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

Colossians 3:25

New Testament
23 Whatever you are doing, work at it with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not for people, 24 because you know that you will receive your inheritance from the Lord as the reward. Serve the Lord Christ. 25 For the one who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there are no exceptions.
50–100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Colossians

References

"... Colossians contains no explicit quotations and few allusions to the Old Testament. The most distinct Old Testament echoes occur in Colossians 3. The claim that Christ is “ seated at the right hand of God ” (3:1) clearly alludes to Psalm 110:1, the most frequent intertext in the New Testament (see, e.g., Hay 1973). Additionally, talk of a new nature's “being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” in 3:10 is “an unavoidable allusion to Genesis 1:26f.” (Wolter 1993:180). Furthermore, the call for slaves to fear the Lord (3:22) and the assertion that there is no partiality (with God [3:25]) cohere with Old Testament texts such as Deuteronomy 10:20, Proverbs 1:7; 3:7, and Ecclesiastes 5:7 in the first instance (compare Sirach 1:11–30; 2:7–9) and Deuteronomy 10:17 in the second (compare Sirach 35:15). Interestingly, 2 Chronicles 19:7 conjoins fear of the Lord on the one hand with the Lord's impartiality on the other ..."
Troy W. Martin and Todd D. Still, “Colossians,” in The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament, ed. David E. Aune, The Blackwell Companions to Religion (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 495.

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 2:8 and Colossians 3:25

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