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Sirach

Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus

About this book
Chapter 4

1 My son, don’t deprive the poor of his living. Don’t make the needy eyes wait long.⁠ 2 Don’t make a hungry soul sorrowful, or provoke a man in his distress. 3 Don’t add more trouble to a heart that is provoked. Don’t put off giving to him who is in need. 4 Don’t reject a suppliant in his affliction. Don’t turn your face away from a poor man.⁠ 5 Don’t turn your eye away from one who asks. Give no occasion to a man to curse you.⁠ 6 For if he curses you in the bitterness of his soul, he who made him will hear his supplication. 7 Endear yourself to the assembly. Bow your head to a great man. 8 Incline your ear to a poor man. Answer him with peaceful words in humility. 9 Deliver him who is wronged from the hand of him who wrongs him;⁠ Don’t be hesitant in giving judgment. 10 Be as a father to the fatherless, and like a husband to their mother. So you will be as a son of the Most High,⁠ and he will love you more than your mother does.⁠

Wisdom’s Rewards and Discipline

11 Wisdom exalts her sons, and takes hold of those who seek her. 12 He who loves her loves life. Those who seek her early will be filled with gladness. 13 He who holds her fast will inherit glory. Where he enters, the Lord will bless. 14 Those who serve her minister to the Holy One. The Lord loves those who love her. 15 He who listens to her will judge the nations. He who heeds her will dwell securely. 16 If he trusts her, he will inherit her, and his generations will possess her. 17 For at the first she will walk with him in crooked ways, and will bring fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline, until she may trust his soul, and try him by her judgments. 18 Then she will return him again to the straight way, and will gladden him, and reveal to him her secrets. 19 If he goes astray, she will forsake him, and hand him over to his fall.

Courage, Honesty, and Shame

20 Watch for the opportunity, and beware of evil. Don’t be ashamed of your soul. 21 For there is a shame that brings sin, and there is a shame that is glory and grace.⁠ 22 Don’t show partiality, discrediting your soul. Don’t revere any man to your falling. 23 Don’t refrain from speaking when it is for safety. Don’t hide your wisdom for the sake of seeming fair. 24 For wisdom will be known by speech, and instruction by the word of the tongue. 25 Don’t speak against the truth and be shamed for your ignorance.⁠ 26 Don’t be ashamed to confess your sins. Don’t fight the river’s current. 27 Don’t lay yourself down for a fool to tread upon. Don’t be partial to one who is mighty. 28 Strive for the truth to death, and the Lord God will fight for you.⁠ 29 Don’t be hasty with your tongue, or slack and negligent in your deeds. 30 Don’t be like a lion in your house, or suspicious of your servants. 31 Don’t let your hand be stretched out to receive, and closed when you should repay.⁠

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Compare Sirach 4:28 and Athanasius, Defense Against the Arians 90

Deuterocanon · Early Christian

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Summary

The Christian theologian Athanasius uses Sirach as an authoritative source for teaching when urging his audience to defend truth with courage, quoting Sirach’s call to fight for what is right, showing how he was influenced by Jewish traditions.

Passages

Sirach 4:28

Deuterocanon · Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
26 Don’t be ashamed to confess your sins. Don’t fight the river’s current. 27 Don’t lay yourself down for a fool to tread upon. Don’t be partial to one who is mighty. 28 Strive for the truth to death, and the Lord God will fight for you. 29 Don’t be hasty with your tongue, or slack and negligent in your deeds. 30 Don’t be like a lion in your house, or suspicious of your servants.
195–180 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Sirach

Athanasius, Defense Against the Arians 90

Early Christian
Now if anyone wishes to become acquainted with my case, and the falsehood of Eusebius and his fellows, let him read what has been written in my behalf, and let him hear the witnesses, not one, or two, or three, but that great number of Bishops; and again let him attend to the witnesses of these proceedings, Liberius and Hosius, and their fellows, who when they saw the attempts made against us, chose rather to endure all manner of sufferings than to give up the truth, and the judgment which had been pronounced in our favour. And this they did with an honourable and righteous intention, for what they suffered proves to what straits the other Bishops were reduced. And they are memorials and records against the Arian heresy, and the wickedness of false accusers, and afford a pattern and model for those who come after, to contend for the truth unto death, and to abominate the Arian heresy which fights against Christ, and is a forerunner of Antichrist, and not to believe those who attempt to speak against me.
335 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Athanasius, Defense Against the Arians

References

"... But to this first terminus ante quem we can now add a second, even more precise one— that is, the sending of Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 on the occasion of Easter in 367. In this letter the patriarch makes a clear distinction between the biblical books, truly “inspired by God,” to be read by the faithful, and “the so-called apocrypha,” which are but “an invention of heretics,” to be proscribed. To the first category belong not only the writings “that have been canonized” (i.e., the “twenty-two books of the Old Testament” and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, listed at §§ 17–18), but also the books “appointed to be read,” that is, the apocryphal / deuterocanonical books of the Septuagint (the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit), to which Athanasius adds the Teaching of the Apostles (most probably, the Didache) and the Shepherd of Hermas. As for the second group, in spite of the intentionally generic tone he uses, the reference Athanasius makes to the different writings attributed to Enoch, Moses, or Isaiah, written with the purpose of “deceiving the simple folk” (§ 21), seems to perfectly apply to 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Ascension of Isaiah, the three most significant pseudepigrapha translated into Ethiopic. If these texts, apparently popular among Egyptian monks, were officially forbidden by the inflexible bishop of Alexandria in 367, it is difficult to imagine that they would still have been sent to Aksum or elsewhere for translation after that date ..."
Pierluigi Piovanelli, “Ethiopic,” in A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission, ed. Alexander Kulik, Gabriele Boccaccini, Lorenzo DiTommaso, David Hamidović, and Michael E. Stone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 35–47.

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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Sirach 4:28 and Athanasius, Defense Against the Arians 90

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