For Teaching

Ecclesiasticus 10: What the Passage Says

68 claims across 31 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ecclesiasticus 10 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter sets out how rulers shape the people under them, and says that power over the earth is in the Lord's hand. It then turns to pride, calling it the beginning of sin, and lists how the Lord has cast down proud rulers and nations and put the lowly in their place. It ends with sayings about where real honor lies: with those who fear the Lord, whether they are rich, noble, or poor, and not with boasting, harshness, or wealth by itself.

Claim by Claim

10:1
- A wise judge will instruct his people.
- The government of a prudent man is well ordered.
10:2
- As the judge of the people is, so are his officers.
- As the ruler of a city is, so are all who dwell in it.
10:3
- An unwise king destroys his people.
- A city becomes inhabited through the prudence of those in authority.
10:4
- The power over the earth is in the Lord's hand.
- In due time the Lord will set over the earth a profitable ruler.
10:5
- The prosperity of a man is in God's hand.
- God lays his honour upon the person of the scribe.
10:6
- Do not bear hatred toward your neighbour for every wrong.
- Do nothing at all by injurious practices.
10:7
- Pride is hateful before God.
- Pride is hateful before man.
- By both God and man one commits iniquity through pride.
10:8
- A kingdom is transferred from one people to another because of unrighteous dealings.
- A kingdom is transferred from one people to another because of injuries.
- A kingdom is transferred from one people to another because of riches gotten by deceit.
10:9
- Earth and ashes have no reason to be proud.
- There is nothing more wicked than a covetous man.
- A covetous man puts his own soul up for sale.
- A covetous man casts away his inward parts while he lives.
10:10
- The physician cuts off a long disease.
- He who is a king today will die tomorrow.
10:11
- When a man is dead, he inherits creeping things, beasts, and worms.
10:12
- The beginning of pride is a man's departing from God.
- In pride a man's heart turns away from his Maker.
10:13
- Pride is the beginning of sin.
- He who has pride will pour out abomination.
- Because of pride the Lord brought strange calamities upon them.
- The Lord overthrew them utterly.
10:14
- The Lord has cast down the thrones of proud princes.
- The Lord has set up the meek in the place of proud princes.
10:15
- The Lord has plucked up the roots of proud nations.
- The Lord has planted the lowly in their place.
10:16
- The Lord overthrew the countries of the heathen.
- The Lord destroyed them to the foundations of the earth.
10:17
- He took some of them away.
- He destroyed them.
- He made their memorial cease from the earth.
10:18
- Pride was not made for men.
- Furious anger was not made for those born of a woman.
10:19
- Those who fear the Lord are a sure seed.
- Those who love the Lord are an honourable plant.
- Those who disregard the law are a dishonourable seed.
- Those who transgress the commandments are a deceivable seed.
10:20
- Among brethren the chief is honoured.
- Those who fear the Lord are honoured in his eyes.
10:21
- The fear of the Lord goes before the obtaining of authority.
- Roughness and pride cause the loss of authority.
10:22
- Whether a man is rich, noble, or poor, their glory is the fear of the Lord.
10:23
- It is not right to despise a poor man who has understanding.
- It is not fitting to magnify a sinful man.
10:24
- Great men, judges, and potentates shall be honoured.
- None of them is greater than the man who fears the Lord.
10:25
- Free men will serve a wise servant.
- A man who has knowledge will not grumble when he is corrected.
10:26
- Do not be overwise in doing your work.
- Do not boast of yourself in the time of your distress.
10:27
- He who labours and abounds in all things is better than he who boasts of himself and lacks bread.
10:28
- My son, glorify your soul in meekness.
- Give your soul honour according to its worth.
10:29
- No one will justify the man who sins against his own soul.
- No one will honour the man who dishonours his own life.
10:30
- The poor man is honoured for his skill.
- The rich man is honoured for his riches.
10:31
- He who is honoured in poverty will be honoured much more in riches.
- He who is dishonourable in riches will be much more dishonourable in poverty.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1: "Judge" here does not mean only a man who settles cases in court. Sirach uses the word for the man who governs, as the judges of Israel's early history did, so the verse is about ruling a people rather than about courtrooms.
10:2: Officers were the men who worked for the ruler. They carried out his orders around the city.
10:3: A city being "inhabited" means full and thriving. Bad rule emptied ancient cities, through famine, flight, war or deportation, so a crowded city was the visible measure of a competent ruler.
10:4: The Lord is a name for God. You will see it all through the Bible.
10:5: A scribe in Sirach's world was not a copyist but a trained scholar, expert in the law and in wisdom writing, often serving as an official of the king or the temple. The author counted himself one. "Upon the person of the scribe" renders a phrase meaning "on the face of," that is, on the scribe himself. Some manuscripts read "lawgiver" here instead of "scribe."
10:6: "Injurious practices" renders a Greek word (hybris) that covers insolent, humiliating violence: not merely harm done, but harm done arrogantly, meant to shame the victim.
10:7: The second half of the verse is obscure in the Greek. It has been read as meaning that injustice offends God and man alike, and as meaning that the proud man commits wrongs against both. Translators have gone both ways.
10:8: "Translated" in 1611 English meant carried across or transferred from one holder to another. It has nothing to do with language. The sentence is about rule over a kingdom passing to a different people.
10:9: "Earth and ashes," that is, dust and ashes, is a set phrase for a human being considered as mortal stuff; Abraham uses it of himself in Genesis. "Bowels" meant the inner organs, thought of as the seat of feeling and of a person's inmost self. The line is compressed, and has been read both as the greedy man throwing away his own insides while still alive and as his selling off what is innermost in him.
10:10: The Greek of the first line is uncertain and has been read two ways: that the doctor cuts a long illness short, and that a long illness makes light of the doctor. The King James translators took the first.
10:11: "Inherit" is the legal word for the portion a man comes into. Here the man who came into a kingdom comes into nothing but the creatures of the grave.
10:13: "Abomination" translates a word for what is ritually detestable, the kind of thing that defiles whoever touches it. "Strange calamities" means extraordinary, unheard of ones, not foreign ones. "Them" shifts to the plural without naming anyone; the author has in mind the proud nations and rulers of the past, which the next verses spell out.
10:14: "Meek" in 1611 meant humble and unassuming. It is set here against the proud prince, not against the strong man, and does not imply timidity or weakness.
10:15: This is a picture from a garden. Pulling a plant up by its roots means taking it away for good.
10:16: "Heathen" translates the ordinary Greek word for the nations, meaning peoples other than Israel; in 1611 it carried none of the contempt it carries now. "Destroyed them to the foundations of the earth" is the language of a city razed so completely that only the footings of its walls remain.
10:17: To make a people's "memorial to cease" is to wipe out all remembrance of them, name and line together. Being remembered by descendants and neighbors was what survival after death chiefly amounted to in this culture, so erasure of memory was the heaviest loss the writer could name.
10:18: "Born of a woman" is a standard Hebrew way of saying "a human being," used when the point is human frailty and mortality.
10:19: "Seed" means offspring, a line of descendants; honor and shame attached to a whole family line, not to an individual alone. "Deceivable" in 1611 meant liable to be deceived, easily led astray, not deceitful. "Fear of the Lord," the phrase that runs through the rest of the chapter, means reverent awe together with the obedience that goes with it, not fright.
10:20: Brothers here can mean people from one family. It can also mean people from one country.
10:21: This verse is missing from the oldest and best Greek manuscripts of Sirach. It belongs to an expanded Greek text that passed into the Latin Bible, which is where the King James translators found it. Modern editions often omit it or bracket it.
10:22: "Noble" means born into a high-ranking, powerful family, the kind that owned land and held office.
10:23: "Meet" and "convenient" both meant fitting or proper in 1611; neither carries its modern sense here. "Magnify" means to make much of someone, to build him up in public.
10:25: "Servant" translates the Greek word for a slave. A capable household slave could manage an estate and give orders to free members of the household, which is the situation the line pictures. "Grudge" in 1611 meant to grumble or complain, and "reformed" meant corrected or disciplined.
10:26: "Overwise" renders a phrase meaning roughly "do not play the wise man." The line is compressed and has been read as a warning against showing off cleverness instead of getting the work done, and as a warning against overworking a job past what it needs.
10:27: "Wanteth" means lacks. "Bread" stands for food in general, as it does throughout the Bible, so the boaster of this line is going hungry.
10:28: "Soul" here means yourself, your life, not a part of a person set apart from the body. "Meekness" is humility. "According to the dignity thereof" means according to its actual worth, the measure being neither more nor less than what is really there.
10:30: "Skill" translates a word for knowledge or understanding. The line sets what a man knows against what a man owns, using the same verb, "is honoured," for both.
10:31: This verse is like a riddle. If people honor a poor man, they will honor him even more when he is rich.

Read Ecclesiasticus 10