Sirach 9:16

Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon

14 As much as you can, aim to know your neighbors, and consult with the wise. 15 Let your conversation be with intelligent people, and let all your discussion be about the law of the Most High. 16 Let the righteous be your dinner companions, and let your glory be in the fear of the Lord. 17 A work is praised for the skill of the artisan; so a people's leader is proved wise by his words. 18 The loud of mouth are feared in their city, and the one who is reckless in speech is hated.

Clement of Alexandria The Instructor 3.4

Paedagogus
Patristic

And these women are carried about over the temples, sacrificing and practising divination day by day, spending their time with fortune-tellers, and begging priests, and disreputable old women; and they keep up old wives' whisperings over their cups, learning charms and incantations from soothsayers, to the ruin of the nuptial bonds. And some men they keep; by others they are kept; and others are promised them by the diviners. They know not that they are cheating themselves, and giving up themselves as a vessel of pleasure to those that wish to indulge in wantonness; and exchanging their purity for the foulest outrage, they think what is the most shameful ruin a great stroke of business. And there are many ministers to this meretricious licentiousness, insinuating themselves, one from one quarter, another from another. For the licentious rush readily into uncleanness, like swine rushing to that part of the hold of the ship which is depressed. Whence the Scripture most strenuously exhorts, Introduce not every one into your house, for the snares of the crafty are many. And in another place, Let just men be your guests, and in the fear of the Lord let your boast remain. Away with fornication. For know this well, says the apostle, that no fornicator, or unclean person, or covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

 Notes and References

"... The eighty-fifth of the Apostolical Canons gives a list of the books of the Hebrew Canon, and adds the first three books of the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach; these last four are not, however, included in the Canon, though the Wisdom of Sirach is specially recommended for the instruction of the young. Again, in the Apostolical Constitutions, 6:14, 15, quotations from Sirach are given with the same formula as those from the books of the Hebrew Canon, but in the list given in 2:57 of the same work, there is no mention of any of the books of the Apocrypha ... The evidence of Clement of Alexandria is conflicting; in his Paedagogus he quotes very often from Sirach, and speaks of it as 'scripture', from which it would evidently appear that he regarded it as canonical Scripture; but, according to Eusebius, Clement reckoned Sirach among the 'Antilegomena', for in speaking of Clement's works he mentions the Stromateis, or 'Medleys', and says: 'He quotes in them passages from the disputed Scriptures, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, for example, and of Jesus the son of Sirach, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and those of Barnabas, Clement, and Jude ..."

Charles, R. H. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (p. 299) Oxford University Press, 1913

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