For Teaching

Ecclesiasticus 16: What the Passage Says

70 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ecclesiasticus 16 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter warns against wanting many children who are useless or who do not honor the Lord, saying one just person is worth more than a thousand. It lists those he did not spare: the giants of long ago, the place where Lot lived, the doomed people, and the six hundred thousand men on foot, and says that mercy and anger both belong to him and that each person is repaid according to his works. It then answers the person who imagines he can hide unnoticed among countless creatures, describing how creation shakes when he comes. It closes by calling the son to listen to teaching about the works of the Lord, ordered from the beginning and never disobeying his word.

Claim by Claim

16:1
- The hearer is told not to desire a multitude of useless children.
- The hearer is told not to take delight in ungodly sons.
16:2
- If ungodly sons multiply, the hearer is told not to rejoice in them.
- The exception is if the fear of the Lord is with them.
16:3
- The hearer is told not to trust in the life of such children.
- The hearer is told not to rely on their number.
- One just person is better than a thousand.
- It is better to die childless than to have ungodly children.
16:4
- By one person who has understanding a city will be filled.
- The family of the wicked will quickly become desolate.
16:5
- The speaker has seen many such things with his eyes.
- The speaker's ear has heard things greater than these.
16:6
- A fire will be kindled in the assembly of the ungodly.
- Wrath is kindled in a rebellious nation.
16:7
- God was not appeased toward the ancient giants.
- The ancient giants revolted in the strength of their folly.
16:8
- God did not spare the place where Lot sojourned.
- God abhorred them for their pride.
16:9
- God did not pity the people appointed to destruction.
- Those people were taken away in their sins.
16:10
- God did not pity the six hundred thousand footmen.
- Those footmen were gathered together in the hardness of their hearts.
16:11
- If there is even one stiffnecked person among the people, it would be a marvel for him to go unpunished.
- Mercy and wrath are both with God.
- God is mighty to forgive.
- God is mighty to pour out displeasure.
16:12
- God's correction is as great as his mercy.
- God judges a man according to his works.
16:13
- The sinner will not escape with his plunder.
- The patient endurance of the godly will not be made void.
16:14
- Room will be made for every work of mercy.
- Every man will find according to his works.
16:15
- The Lord hardened Pharaoh so that he would not know him.
- This was done so that God's powerful works might be known to the world.
16:16
- God's mercy is visible to every creature.
- God has separated his light from the darkness with adamant.
16:17
- The hearer is told not to say, I will hide myself from the Lord.
- The hearer is told not to say, will anyone remember me from above.
- The hearer is told not to say, I will not be remembered among so many people.
- The hearer is told not to say, what is my soul among such an infinite number of creatures.
16:18
- The heaven, the heaven of heavens, the deep, the earth, and all that is in them will be shaken when God visits.
16:19
- The mountains and the foundations of the earth shake with trembling when the Lord looks upon them.
16:20
- No heart can rightly consider these things.
- No one is able to comprehend God's ways.
16:21
- It is a tempest that no man can see.
- Most of God's works are hidden.
16:22
- No one can declare the works of God's justice.
- No one can endure them.
- God's covenant is far off.
- The examination of all things comes at the end.
16:23
- The man lacking understanding thinks upon empty things.
- A foolish and erring man imagines follies.
16:24
- The speaker tells his son to listen to him.
- The speaker tells his son to learn knowledge.
- The speaker tells his son to attend to his words with his heart.
16:25
- The speaker will set forth instruction by measure.
- The speaker will declare God's knowledge exactly.
16:26
- The works of the Lord have been ordered by his judgment from the beginning.
- From the time he made them he assigned their portions.
16:27
- God ordered his works for ever.
- The chief of his works are in his hand for all generations.
- His works do not labour.
- His works do not grow weary.
- His works do not cease from their tasks.
16:28
- None of God's works crowds out another.
- They will never disobey his word.
16:29
- After this the Lord looked upon the earth.
- The Lord filled the earth with his blessings.
16:30
- God covered the face of the earth with every kind of living thing.
- They will return into the earth again.

Words Worth Explaining

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

16:1: "Unprofitable" here means coming to nothing, useless, rather than anything financial. In this society a large family was counted a mark of success and security: sons worked the land, defended the household and carried the family name into the next generation. The writer is arguing against that assumption, which makes the advice deliberately jarring. "Ungodly" in the King James does not mean monstrous or criminal; it translates a word for people who live without regard for God.
16:2: "The fear of the Lord" is a fixed phrase in this kind of writing. It means awe and reverence, and by extension a whole way of living that takes God seriously. It does not mean being frightened of him.
16:3: Dying childless was regarded as a calamity and often as a public disgrace, since a man's name, land and care in old age all depended on sons. Saying it is better to die childless than to have children who do not honor God was a shocking claim, not a mild one.
16:4: "Replenished" in 1611 English simply means filled or populated; the prefix does not imply filling again. "Kindred" means a person's family or clan, the whole extended household rather than only the children.
16:6: "Congregation" in the King James means an assembled community or crowd, not a church congregation in the modern sense. The fire imagery draws on stories in which fire broke out among rebellious Israelites in the wilderness, as in Numbers 11 and Numbers 16.
16:7: "The old giants" are the giants of Genesis 6:4, the offspring of the "sons of God" and human women, whom Jewish tradition of this period understood to have been swept away in the flood. "Fell away" means revolted or rebelled, not stumbled.
16:8: "The place where Lot sojourned" is Sodom, destroyed in Genesis 19. To "sojourn" is to live somewhere as a resident foreigner, without the rights of a native. Jewish writers of this period commonly named pride, rather than any single act, as the city's characteristic sin.
16:9: "Perdition" means destruction or ruin, so "the people of perdition" are a people marked out for destruction. The reference is to the inhabitants of Canaan whom Israel displaced, as described in Deuteronomy 7 and 9.
16:10: The six hundred thousand are the fighting men counted at the exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12:37). "Footmen" means foot soldiers, men on foot as opposed to chariotry or cavalry. This generation is the one that refused to enter the land and died in the wilderness (Numbers 14).
16:11: "Stiffnecked" is a farming image: an ox that sets its neck against the yoke and will not be turned by the driver. It is used again and again of Israel in Exodus and Deuteronomy. "It is marvel if he escape" means it would be astonishing if he escaped, which is a strong way of saying he will not.
16:12: Correction means showing someone he was wrong so he can learn.
16:13: "Spoils" means plunder, goods seized by force or fraud. "Frustrate" is the older form of "frustrated" and means made void or disappointed, so the line says the waiting of the godly will not be wasted.
16:14: "Every work of mercy" translates a Greek expression for practical acts of charity, and above all for almsgiving, the giving of money and food to the poor. This was a concrete religious duty, not a general attitude. "Make way" means make room, leave space in your life for it.
16:15: Verses 15 and 16 are missing from the oldest Greek manuscripts of this book and from the surviving Hebrew. They appear in a later family of manuscripts, which is the text the King James translators worked from; many modern editions print them in brackets or omit them. The verse refers to the repeated statement in Exodus that Pharaoh's heart was hardened so that he would not let Israel go.
16:16: "Adamant" in 1611 meant a stone of legendary hardness, sometimes the diamond and sometimes the lodestone or magnet. The word comes from a Greek term meaning unconquerable or unbreakable. The image is of a boundary between light and darkness set in the hardest material there is.
16:17: "My soul" translates a word meaning a person's life or self, the living individual, rather than a separable inner part. The whole speech is the imagined excuse of someone who assumes he is too small to be noticed, and the argument that follows answers it.
16:18: "The heaven of heavens" is a Hebrew way of saying the very highest heaven, the top of everything that exists above. "The deep" is the great mass of water thought to lie beneath the earth. "Visit" in the King James means to come and inspect, and is very often used of coming to judge; it does not mean a social call.
16:19: The foundations are the deep, solid base under the earth. A house has one under its floor too.
16:21: The word translated "tempest" means a violent windstorm. The point of the comparison is that the wind itself cannot be seen even when its effects are everywhere, and the Greek could also be read as saying his works pass by unnoticed.
16:22: A "covenant" is a formal binding agreement, here the one between God and Israel, with obligations on both sides. "Afar off" is genuinely ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean far away in time, so that the reckoning is delayed, or remote from an individual's view, so that he cannot see it working. "The trial of all things" means the testing or examination of everything.
16:23: "Wanteth" in the King James means lacks, the opposite of its modern sense. The man in view does not desire understanding; he has none.
16:24: "My son" is the standard way a wisdom teacher addresses a pupil, used throughout this book and throughout Proverbs. It marks the start of a formal lesson and does not require a literal son.
16:25: "In weight" is the image of a merchant weighing goods out on a balance: measured carefully and given in full, with nothing held back or added. "Doctrine" here simply means teaching, without the later sense of official dogma.
16:26: "In judgment" means by deliberate decision, with everything weighed, rather than in a courtroom sense. "Disposed" in 1611 English means arranged or assigned to their places; it does not mean got rid of.
16:27: "Garnished" in 1611 means set in order and made beautiful, a much stronger word than the modern kitchen sense. "The chief of them" are the greatest of his works, which the following lines identify by their behavior: they never tire and never stop, which points to the sun, moon and stars keeping their courses without rest.
16:28: The picture is still of the heavenly bodies, each moving on its appointed path so that none crosses or blocks another.
16:30: "Return into it again" means going back into the earth at death, the sense of the words in Genesis 3:19 about returning to the dust.

Read Ecclesiasticus 16