Sirach 7:13

Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon

11 Do not ridicule a person who is embittered in spirit, for there is One who humbles and exalts. 12 Do not devise a lie against your brother, or do the same to a friend. 13 Refuse to utter any lie, for it is a habit that results in no good. 14 Do not babble in the assembly of the elders, and do not repeat yourself when you pray. 15 Do not hate hard labor or farm work, which was created by the Most High.

Augustine City of God 14.8

On the City of God Against the Pagans
Patristic

For who does not know that the wicked exult with joy? Yet there is no contentment for the wicked, says the Lord. And how so, unless because contentment, when the word is used in its proper and distinctive significance, means something different from joy? In like manner, who would deny that it were wrong to enjoin upon men that whatever they desire others to do to them they should themselves do to others, lest they should mutually please one another by shameful and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them, is very wholesome and just. And how is this, unless because the will is in this place used strictly, and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary phraseology would not have allowed the saying, Be unwilling to make any manner of lie, had there not been also an evil will, whose wickedness separates if from that which the angels celebrated, Peace on earth, of good will to men.

 Notes and 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 ..."

Corley, Jeremy "Sirach" in Oegema, Gerbern S. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 284-305) Oxford University Press, 2021

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