Texts in Conversation
Rabbinic tradition in tractate Sanhedrin quotes a passage from Sirach, demonstrating how it influenced Rabbinic teaching. The Rabbis may have known an early Hebrew form of Sirach, known as Ben Sira, that they adapted into their own teaching style.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 42:9
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
9 A daughter is a secret cause of wakefulness to a father. Care for her takes away sleep— in her youth, lest she pass the flower of her age; when she is married, lest she should be hated; 10 in her virginity, lest she should be defiled and be with child in her father’s house; when she has a husband, lest she should transgress; and when she is married, lest she should be barren. 11 Keep a strict watch over a headstrong daughter, lest she make you a laughingstock to your enemies, a byword in the city and notorious among the people, and shame you in public. 12 Don’t gaze at every beautiful body. Don’t sit in the midst of women. 13 For from garments comes a moth, and from a woman comes a woman’s wickedness. 14 Better is the wickedness of a man than a pleasant woman, a woman who puts you to shame and disgrace.
Sanhedrin 100b
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
If your difficulty is from its literal meaning, that does not pose a difficulty, as in the Torah, God also wrote: “You shall not destroy its trees” (Deuteronomy 20:19). It is prohibited to destroy both trees and fish skin arbitrarily. If your difficulty is from its homiletic interpretation as a euphemism, ben Sira is teaching us proper conduct: A man should not engage in sexual intercourse in an atypical manner, i.e., anal intercourse, with his wife, as it causes her discomfort. Rather, perhaps the book poses a difficulty because it is written there: A daughter is for her father false treasure; due to fear for her he will not sleep at night: During her minority, lest she be seduced; during her young womanhood lest she engage in licentiousness; once she has reached her majority, lest she not marry; once she marries, lest she have no children; once she grows old, lest she engage in witchcraft (Ben Sira 42:11–14). Perhaps you believe that one should not say this to the father of daughters. Didn’t the Sages also say it with regard to women? They said: It is impossible for the world to exist without males and without females; nevertheless, happy is one whose children are males and woe unto him whose children are females.
Date: 450–550 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The second of Abaye’s examples comes originally from Sirach 42:9–10, a passage about daughters. In both the Masada scroll and Ms B from the Cairo genizah, this passage contains eight cola. The rabbinic quotation, given in Hebrew, contains seven, only six of which parallel the Ben Sira manuscripts. The one colon not found in the manuscripts concerns keeping one’s daughter from witchcraft in her old age. In general the outlines of the thought are the same, but the wording and order of the lines differ widely between the rabbinic citation and the manuscripts ... “Do not let anxiety enter your heart, for it has slain many a person.” This third of Abaye’s examples is an admonition in Aramaic that has no direct parallel in Ben Sira, although Segal argues that it “is a combination of several lines in our book.” Indeed some of the material from this quotation does occur in somewhat similar contexts in Ben Sira ..."
Wright, Benjamin G.
Praise Israel for Wisdom and Instruction: Essays on Ben Sira and Wisdom, the Letter of Aristeas and the Septuagint
(p. 184) Brill, 2008
* 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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