Relationships and the Choice of Friends

Chapter 9

1 Don’t be jealous over the wife of your bosom, and don’t teach her an evil lesson against yourself. 2 Don’t give your soul to a woman and let her trample down your strength. 3 Don’t go to meet a woman who plays the prostitute, lest perhaps you fall into her snares. 4 Don’t associate with a woman who is a singer, lest perhaps you be caught by her tricks. 5 Don’t gaze at a virgin, lest perhaps you stumble and incur penalties for her.⁠ 6 Don’t give your soul to prostitutes, that you not lose your inheritance. 7 Don’t look around in the streets of the city. Don’t wander in its deserted places.⁠ 8 Turn your eye away from a beautiful woman, and don’t gaze at another’s beauty. Many have been led astray by the beauty of a woman; and with this, passion is kindled like a fire.⁠ 9 Don’t dine at all with a woman who has a husband, or revel with her at wine, lest perhaps your soul turn away to her, and with your spirit you slide into destruction.⁠ 10 Don’t forsake an old friend; for a new one is not comparable to him. A new friend is like new wine: if it becomes old, you will drink it with gladness.⁠ 11 Don’t envy the success of a sinner; for you don’t know what his end will be. 12 Don’t delight in the delights of the ungodly. Remember they will not go unpunished to the grave. 13 Keep yourself far from the man who has power to kill, and you will not be troubled by the fear of death. If you come to him, commit no fault, lest he take away your life. Know surely that you go about in the midst of snares, and walk upon the battlements of a city. 14 As well as you can, aim to know your neighbors, and take counsel with the wise. 15 Let your conversation be with men of understanding. Let all your discourse be in the law of the Most High. 16 Let righteous people be companions at your table. Let your glorying be in the fear of the Lord.⁠

Rulers and the Sin of Pride

17 A work is commended because of the skill of the artisan; so he who rules the people will be considered wise for his speech. 18 A loudmouthed man is dangerous in his city. He who is reckless in his speech will be hated.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Sirach 9:10 and Matthew 9:17

Deuterocanon · New Testament

Summary

In Matthew, Jesus uses new wine and new skins to picture a renewal movement, and Sirach praises old friends as aged wine that improves with time. Both use the same image and adapt it differently, showing the diversity of Jewish interpretive tradition.

Passages

Sirach 9:10

Deuterocanon · Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus

8 Turn your eye away from a beautiful woman, and don’t gaze at another’s beauty. Many have been led astray by the beauty of a woman; and with this, passion is kindled like a fire. 9 Don’t dine at all with a woman who has a husband, or revel with her at wine, lest perhaps your soul turn away to her, and with your spirit you slide into destruction. 10 Don’t forsake an old friend; for a new one is not comparable to him. A new friend is like new wine: if it becomes old, you will drink it with gladness. 11 Don’t envy the success of a sinner; for you don’t know what his end will be. 12 Don’t delight in the delights of the ungodly. Remember they will not go unpunished to the grave.

195–180 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Sirach

Matthew 9:17

New Testament

15 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn while the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment because the patch will pull away from the garment and the tear will be worse. 17 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the skins burst and the wine is spilled out and the skins are destroyed. Instead they put new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.” 18 As he was saying these things, a leader came, bowed low before him, and said, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.” 19 Jesus and his disciples got up and followed him.

70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Matthew

References

"... Matthew 9:17 offers a summary of the kind attested occasionally in his redactional work (Matthew 5:18 diff. Luke 16:17, etc.): the “new wine and new skins” are preserved. This probably refers to the new reality of the rule of God and to the new commandments of Jesus (Matthew 5) ... Some scholars have proposed that originally, the metaphors of the old garment and the new wine did not belong together, since the former concerns the preservation of what is old and the latter concerns the protection of what is new. However, the motifs of an old garment and wine skins are already linked in Job 13:28. Repairing a garment and filling wine skins were typically female and male activities. Jesus occasionally employed double metaphors and double parables, which were among his favorite modes of speaking ... An old garment can symbolize the past (Hosea 5:12; Isaiah 50:9; 51:6, 8; Sirach 14:17), and especially the past of the cosmos (Psalm 101:27). The fragility of the human person is compared to an old bag and a moth-eaten garment (Job 13:28). New or bright clothing could symbolize an existence renewed by God (2 Enoch 22.8), and wine could be the symbol of the age of salvation (Genesis 49:11–12; Amos 9:13–14; Isaiah 65:21). The eschatological festal calendar of the Qumran community included a feast of the new wine (11QMiqd XIX, 14–15; XX, 4–10). Old wine, which was regarded as particularly good in the Old Testament (Isaiah 25:6), Hellenistic-Roman and Jewish milieus (Sirach 9:10; b. Berakhot 51a), is sometimes employed in the rabbinic literature as a symbol of the doctrine of Torah ..."

Rainer Riesner, “The Question of the Baptists' Disciples on Fasting (Matt 9:14-17; Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39),” in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 3305–3347.

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

Relationships and the Choice of Friends

Rulers and the Sin of Pride

Sirach52 chapters

Compare Sirach 9:10 and Matthew 9:17

Summary

Passages

Sirach 9:10

Matthew 9:17

References

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