Ecclesiasticus 23: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter opens with a prayer to God as Father, asking not to be handed over to proud looks, empty hopes, greed and lust, and asking for discipline over thought and heart. It then teaches about the mouth: the habit of swearing oaths and naming God brings guilt and trouble on a household, and abusive speech leaves a man beyond correction. The last part describes the adulterer who tells himself the darkness hides him, and the wife who leaves her husband and bears a child by another man, and what comes to each of them. It ends by saying those who are left will know that nothing is better than the fear of the Lord.

Claim by Claim

1. 23:1
   • The speaker addresses the Lord as Father and ruler of his whole life.
   • The speaker asks not to be abandoned to their counsel.
   • The speaker asks not to be allowed to fall by them.
2. 23:2
   • The speaker asks who will set scourges over his thoughts.
   • The speaker asks who will set the discipline of wisdom over his heart.
   • The purpose is that they not spare him for his ignorances.
   • The purpose is that his sins not be passed over.
3. 23:3
   • The aim is that his ignorances not increase.
   • The aim is that his sins not abound to his destruction.
   • The aim is that he not fall before his adversaries.
   • The aim is that his enemy not rejoice over him.
   • The enemy's hope is far from God's mercy.
4. 23:4
   • The speaker addresses the Lord as Father and God of his life.
   • The speaker asks not to be given haughty eyes.
   • The speaker asks that an arrogant mind always be turned away from God's servants.
5. 23:5
   • The speaker asks that vain cravings be turned away from him.
   • The speaker asks that lust be turned away from him.
   • God will uphold the one who always desires to serve him.
6. 23:6
   • The speaker asks that the appetite of the belly not take hold of him.
   • The speaker asks that lust of the flesh not take hold of him.
   • The speaker asks that God not hand his servant over to a shameless mind.
7. 23:7
   • Children are called to hear the discipline of the mouth.
   • Whoever keeps it will never be caught by his own lips.
8. 23:8
   • The sinner will be left in his own foolishness.
   • The reviler and the proud will be tripped up by it.
9. 23:9
   • One is told not to accustom his mouth to oaths.
   • One is told not to make a habit of naming the Holy One.
10. 23:10
    • A servant continually beaten will not be without a bruise.
    • One who swears and names God continually will not be cleansed of sin.
11. 23:11
    • A man who swears much will be filled with lawlessness.
    • The scourge will never depart from his house.
    • If he offends, his sin is upon him.
    • If he does not acknowledge his sin, he commits a double offence.
    • If he swears in vain, he will not be held innocent.
    • His house will be full of calamities.
12. 23:12
    • There is a kind of speech clothed about with death.
    • It is wished that such speech not be found in the inheritance of Jacob.
    • All such things are far from the godly.
    • The godly do not wallow in sins.
13. 23:13
    • One is told not to accustom his mouth to coarse, undisciplined speech.
    • In such speech is the word of sin.
14. 23:14
    • One is told to remember his father and mother when sitting among great men.
    • One is told not to be forgetful in their presence.
    • Otherwise he becomes a fool by his habit.
    • Otherwise he wishes he had not been born.
    • Otherwise he curses the day of his birth.
15. 23:15
    • A man accustomed to abusive words will never be corrected all the days of his life.
16. 23:16
    • Two kinds of people multiply sins.
    • A third kind brings wrath.
    • A burning desire is like a blazing fire.
    • That desire will not be quenched until it is consumed.
    • A man who is a fornicator in the body of his flesh will not cease until he has kindled a fire.
17. 23:17
    • To a fornicator all bread is sweet.
    • He will not leave off until he dies.
18. 23:18
    • A man who breaks his marriage speaks in his heart.
    • He says, Who sees me?
    • He says darkness is around him.
    • He says the walls cover him.
    • He says no one sees him.
    • He asks what he has to fear.
    • He says the Most High will not remember his sins.
19. 23:19
    • Such a man fears only the eyes of men.
    • He does not know that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun.
    • The eyes of the Lord behold all the ways of men.
    • The eyes of the Lord perceive the most hidden places.
20. 23:20
    • All things were known to him before they were created.
    • After they were completed he looked upon them all.
21. 23:21
    • This man will be punished in the streets of the city.
    • He will be seized where he does not expect it.
22. 23:22
    • The same will happen to a wife who leaves her husband.
    • She provides an heir by another man.
23. 23:23
    • First, she disobeyed the law of the Most High.
    • Second, she trespassed against her own husband.
    • Third, she played the whore in adultery.
    • She brought forth children by another man.
24. 23:24
    • She will be brought out into the assembly.
    • Inquiry will be made concerning her children.
25. 23:25
    • Her children will not take root.
    • Her branches will bear no fruit.
26. 23:26
    • She will leave her memory for a curse.
    • Her disgrace will not be blotted out.
27. 23:27
    • Those who are left will know that nothing is better than the fear of the Lord.
    • Those who are left will know that nothing is sweeter than to heed the commandments of the Lord.
28. 23:28
    • It is great glory to follow the Lord.
    • To be received by him is length of days.

Words Worth Explaining

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

23:1

Verses 1 to 6 are a prayer, one of the few sustained prayers in this book, which is otherwise a collection of teaching. "Governor" in 1611 English means master or the one in charge of a household, not an elected official. "Their counsels" has no antecedent in this chapter: the prayer carries on from the end of the previous chapter, where the writer asked for a guard over his mouth and a seal on his lips, so "they" is most naturally his own lips and thoughts, though it can also be read as the wicked people described earlier.

23:2

"Scourges" are whips. The picture is of a master or schoolmaster correcting a slave or a pupil, and the writer is asking for that kind of severity to be applied to his own thinking. "Discipline" here translates a Greek word meaning upbringing and training, which included correction and punishment as a normal part of education. "Ignorances" is a technical term rather than a vague one: the Law of Moses treated sins committed unknowingly as a distinct category with their own prescribed sacrifices, separate from deliberate wrongdoing.

23:3

"Whose hope is far from thy mercy" attaches to the enemy: he is someone with no expectation of God's mercy for himself. The clause is loosely hung on the sentence in the Greek, and some readers have taken it as a description of what the writer fears becoming.

23:4

"A proud look" is literally "haughty eyes" in the Greek, a standard idiom for arrogance as it shows in the way a person looks at other people.

23:5

"Concupiscence" in 1611 English meant strong craving, most often sexual desire. The sentence switches from "me" to "him that is desirous": the writer's request about himself turns into a general statement about anyone who wants to serve God.

23:6

"Impudent" in 1611 English meant shameless, having lost the capacity to feel shame, which is considerably stronger than the modern sense of cheeky or rude.

23:7

"Hear, O ye children" is the standard way a wisdom teacher addressed his students, and "children" means pupils rather than the young. "The discipline of the mouth" is training in how to speak. "Taken in his lips" uses the language of trapping an animal: the man is caught in a snare made of his own words.

23:9

"Swearing" here does not mean obscene or foul language. It means taking oaths, calling on God as witness to guarantee that what you say is true or that you will do what you promise. Oaths had legal force, so swearing casually devalued them. "The naming of the Holy One" is speaking the name of God, which by this period Jews avoided uttering except in the most formal settings.

23:10

"A blue mark" is a bruise. A household slave was legally subject to beating, so the comparison would have been an everyday one to the first readers.

23:11

"Plague" in 1611 English means any blow or affliction, not specifically disease. "Swear in vain" echoes the wording of the commandment against taking God's name in vain, Exodus 20:7. The "double offence" is sinning and then refusing to acknowledge it, which counts as two wrongs rather than one.

23:12

"A word that is clothed about with death" means speech that carries the death penalty, understood as cursing or blaspheming the name of God, which Leviticus 24:16 punished by stoning. The writer will not repeat the words themselves, only pray that they are never heard in Israel. "The heritage of Jacob" is Israel: the people descended from Jacob together with the land held to be given them.

23:14

The setting is a banquet or a council of prominent men, where a younger man might be carried away and let his speech run loose. Remembering your parents means remembering the household you came from and would disgrace. "Curse the day of thy nativity" is to curse the day you were born; the same wish is spoken by Job in Job 3:3 and by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 20:14. "They day" in the King James text is a printing error for "thy day."

23:15

"Opprobrious words" are insulting and abusive speech, language meant to shame the person it is aimed at.

23:16

"Two sorts of men... and the third" is a standard device in Jewish wisdom writing, where a list counts up and the final item is the real point. Here the third kind, the adulterer, is described at length from verse 18 onward. "A hot mind" translates a phrase about a soul heated like a furnace, meaning burning sexual appetite rather than a hot temper.

23:17

"All bread is sweet to a whoremonger" is a proverb: to such a man any food will do, so any woman will do, and he draws no distinctions. "Whoremonger" in 1611 English meant a man who habitually goes with prostitutes.

23:18

"Breaketh wedlock" means commits adultery. "The most High" is a title for God, in Hebrew Elyon, meaning the one above all others.

23:19

"The most secret parts" means the most hidden places, the dark corners and concealed spots, not parts of the body. It answers directly the adulterer's confidence in verse 18 that walls and darkness hide him.

23:20

"Ere ever" means before. "Perfected" in 1611 English means completed or finished, not made flawless.

23:21

Punishment "in the streets of the city" means public exposure and public penalty, carried out where everyone can see, which is the exact reverse of the secrecy the man relied on.

23:22

The offense named is not only unfaithfulness. A child by another man would be raised as the husband's own and would inherit his property and carry on his family line, so the wrong falls on the whole household and its future as well as on the marriage.

23:23

The law referred to is the prohibition of adultery in the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:14, which carried the death penalty for both parties under Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22.

23:24

"The congregation" is the assembled community, which functioned as a public court in cases like this. "Inquisition shall be made of her children" means a formal inquiry into who fathered them. A child judged illegitimate lost standing within the assembly, a disability set out in Deuteronomy 23:2.

23:25

The image is of a plant: children are the shoots and branches of the family tree, and a line that puts down no roots and bears no fruit simply ends. In a society where a person's name and memory survived through descendants, having no surviving children was regarded as the most complete disaster that could befall someone.

23:26

"Blotted out" is the language of erasing writing from a surface, so the sense is that her disgrace stays permanently on the record rather than being wiped away over time.

23:27

"The fear of the Lord" is a fixed phrase in Jewish wisdom writing and does not mean being frightened. It covers reverence and awe toward God, and in practice the whole of a life lived by his commands. The book returns to this phrase repeatedly as the summary of what wisdom is.

23:28

The Greek here is compressed, and "to be received of him" can mean either to be accepted by him or to be taken up by him. "Long life" translates the ordinary idiom "length of days." This verse does not appear in all Greek manuscripts and may be a later addition rounding off the chapter.