Ecclesiasticus 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Wisdom speaks about herself in the assembly of the Most High: she came from the mouth of the Most High, covered the earth, searched every people for a resting place, and the Creator told her to make her home in Jacob and Israel. She describes her growth there in a long run of images drawn from trees, spices and incense, then calls people to come and eat her fruit. The writer identifies all this with the book of the covenant, the law Moses commanded, and closes by comparing his own teaching to a stream that becomes a river and then a sea, poured out for everyone who seeks wisdom.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • Wisdom will praise herself
   • Wisdom will glory in the midst of her people
2. 24:2
   • Wisdom will open her mouth in the assembly of the Most High
   • Wisdom will triumph before his power
3. 24:3
   • Wisdom says she came out of the mouth of the Most High
   • Wisdom says she covered the earth like a mist
4. 24:4
   • Wisdom says she dwelt in high places
   • Wisdom says her throne is in a pillar of cloud
5. 24:5
   • Wisdom says she alone encircled the vault of heaven
   • Wisdom says she walked in the depth of the abyss
6. 24:6
   • Wisdom says she got possession in the waves of the sea
   • Wisdom says she got possession in all the earth
   • Wisdom says she got possession in every people and nation
7. 24:7
   • Wisdom says she sought rest among all of these
   • Wisdom asks in whose inheritance she should lodge
8. 24:8
   • The Creator of all things gave Wisdom a commandment
   • He who made Wisdom caused her tent to rest
   • He said that Wisdom's dwelling should be in Jacob
   • He said that Wisdom's inheritance should be in Israel
9. 24:9
   • Wisdom says he created her from the beginning, before the world
   • Wisdom says she will never cease to be
10. 24:10
    • Wisdom says she ministered before him in the holy tent
    • Wisdom says she was established in Zion
11. 24:11
    • Wisdom says he gave her rest in the beloved city
    • Wisdom says her authority was in Jerusalem
12. 24:12
    • Wisdom says she took root in an honoured people
    • Wisdom says that people is the portion of the Lord's inheritance
13. 24:13
    • Wisdom says she was exalted like a cedar in Lebanon
    • Wisdom says she was exalted like a cypress on the mountains of Hermon
14. 24:14
    • Wisdom says she was exalted like a palm tree in Engedi
    • Wisdom says she was exalted like a rose plant in Jericho
    • Wisdom says she was exalted like a beautiful olive tree in a plain
    • Wisdom says she grew up like a plane tree by the water
15. 24:15
    • Wisdom says she gave a fragrance like cinnamon and aspalathus
    • Wisdom says she yielded a pleasant odour like choice myrrh
    • Wisdom says she gave scent like galbanum, onycha and stacte
    • Wisdom says she gave scent like the smoke of frankincense in the tent
16. 24:16
    • Wisdom says she stretched out her branches like a terebinth
    • Wisdom says her branches are branches of honour and grace
17. 24:17
    • Wisdom says she put forth a pleasant scent like a vine
    • Wisdom says her flowers are the fruit of honour and riches
18. 24:18
    • Wisdom says she is the mother of fair love
    • Wisdom says she is the mother of fear
    • Wisdom says she is the mother of knowledge
    • Wisdom says she is the mother of holy hope
    • Wisdom says that, being eternal, she is given to all her children
    • Wisdom says her children are those named of him
19. 24:19
    • Wisdom calls all who desire her to come to her
    • Wisdom calls them to fill themselves with her fruits
20. 24:20
    • Wisdom says the memory of her is sweeter than honey
    • Wisdom says her inheritance is sweeter than the honeycomb
21. 24:21
    • Wisdom says those who eat her will hunger for more
    • Wisdom says those who drink her will thirst for more
22. 24:22
    • Wisdom says whoever obeys her will never be put to shame
    • Wisdom says those who work by her will not sin
23. 24:23
    • All these things are the book of the covenant of the Most High God
    • That book is the law which Moses commanded
    • Moses commanded it as an inheritance for the assemblies of Jacob
24. 24:24
    • The hearers are told not to grow faint in being strong in the Lord
    • They are told to cleave to him so that he may strengthen them
    • The Lord Almighty is God alone
    • Besides him there is no other Saviour
25. 24:25
    • He fills all things with his wisdom
    • He fills them as the Pishon does, and as the Tigris in the days of new fruits
26. 24:26
    • He makes understanding abound like the Euphrates
    • He makes understanding abound like the Jordan in the days of harvest
27. 24:27
    • He makes the instruction of knowledge shine forth like light
    • He makes it shine like the Gihon in the days of vintage
28. 24:28
    • The first man did not know wisdom fully
    • The last man will not trace her out
29. 24:29
    • Wisdom's thoughts are more abundant than the sea
    • Wisdom's counsel is deeper than the great deep
30. 24:30
    • The speaker says he came out as a canal from a river
    • The speaker says he came out as a water channel into a garden
31. 24:31
    • The speaker said he would water his best garden
    • The speaker said he would abundantly water his garden bed
    • The speaker's canal became a river
    • The speaker's river became a sea
32. 24:32
    • The speaker says he will yet make instruction shine like the dawn
    • The speaker says he will send her light far off
33. 24:33
    • The speaker says he will yet pour out instruction like prophecy
    • The speaker says he will leave it to all generations for ever
34. 24:34
    • The speaker says he has not laboured for himself alone
    • The speaker says he has laboured for all who seek wisdom

Words Worth Explaining

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

24:1

Through this chapter Wisdom is presented as a woman who stands up and speaks for herself. The word for wisdom is grammatically feminine in both Hebrew and Greek, and Jewish writers of this period regularly built on that grammar to picture wisdom as a woman addressing a crowd, as in Proverbs 8. Her own speech runs from verse 3 to verse 22.

24:2

"Congregation" and "assembly" here translate a word for the whole people of Israel gathered together, the sort of gathering called for worship or for a public announcement, not a building or a denomination.

24:3

"I came out of the mouth of the most High" pictures Wisdom as something God spoke, a word going out from him. The cloud that covers the earth in the second half of the line is the same image continued: breath and speech seen as a mist spreading over everything.

24:4

The pillar of cloud is from the story of the exodus, where the Lord goes ahead of Israel in a column of cloud by day and of fire by night, and settles over the tent of meeting. Saying her throne stands in it places Wisdom where God's presence was said to rest.

24:5

"The circuit of heaven" reflects the ancient picture of the sky as a dome or circle arching over a flat earth; to go around its circuit is to travel its whole rim. "The deep" is the mass of water thought of as lying under the earth and beyond the shores, the same word used for the primal waters in Genesis 1.

24:6

"I got a possession" is property language: to acquire a holding, something owned outright. Wisdom is claiming a stake in every place and every nation before the question of where she will settle comes up in the next verse.

24:7

"Inheritance" in these books rarely means money left in a will. It means the allotted share of land permanently assigned to a family, a tribe or a nation. Wisdom is asking which people's territory she is to live in.

24:8

The "tabernacle" or tent is the portable shrine Israel was said to carry through the wilderness, a tent that was pitched wherever the people camped. "Jacob" and "Israel" are two names of the same ancestor, and both are used as names for the nation descended from him.

24:10

"Sion" is the Greek spelling of Zion, the hill in Jerusalem where the temple stood, and by extension the city itself. "I served before him" uses the language of a priest ministering in the sanctuary.

24:12

This echoes a line from Deuteronomy 32, where the nations are parceled out and "the LORD's portion is his people." The picture is of land divided into shares, with Israel as the share the Lord kept for himself.

24:13

"Libanus" is the Greek form of Lebanon, the mountain range north of Israel, famous across the ancient world for its enormous cedars, the prestige timber used in palaces and temples. Hermon is the high mountain at Israel's northern edge, snow covered much of the year.

24:14

"En-gaddi" is En-gedi, a freshwater spring and oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, known for its palms and its balsam groves. Jericho is another oasis city, in the Jordan valley, also famous for palms and gardens. A plane tree is a large, broad, spreading tree that grows along watercourses. Every name in this verse is a place where something green grows in a dry country.

24:15

The list is the perfumery of the sanctuary: most of these are ingredients of the sacred anointing oil and the incense described in Exodus 30. Cinnamon is the fragrant bark spice. Aspalathus is a thorny aromatic shrub whose wood was burned for scent. Myrrh is a gum resin from a desert tree, used in perfume and burial. Galbanum is a sharp, pungent resin. Onycha, which the King James spells "onyx" here, is not the gemstone; it is the burnable shell plate of a sea snail, used in incense. Storax is the sweet resin of the styrax tree. Frankincense is the pale resin burned in worship, the smoke of which filled the sanctuary.

24:16

"The turpentine tree" is the older English name for the terebinth, a large spreading tree common in the region, tapped for a resin from which turpentine was made. The name has nothing to do with modern paint thinner beyond that resin.

24:17

The vine is named here for its scent rather than its wine: the vine in flower has a strong sweet smell, noticed elsewhere in the Song of Songs.

24:18

"Fear" in this list means reverent awe, the attitude of someone standing before something vastly greater, not fright. "Named of him" is ambiguous in the Greek and the rendering keeps the ambiguity: it can mean children God himself names, or children who bear his name. This verse is also absent from the oldest Greek copies of the book and belongs to a longer, expanded form of the text.

24:21

The line deliberately inverts the expected promise that those who come will never hunger or thirst again. The sense is of an appetite that renews itself: to take in wisdom is to want more of it, not to be left unsatisfied.

24:23

A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties, with obligations on each side. "The book of the covenant" here means the law of Moses, the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures, and "heritage" or "possession" means something handed down permanently, like a family's land.

24:24

This verse is missing from the main Greek manuscripts and survives in the longer Latin form of the book. "Confirm you" means make you firm or steady, and "cleave unto him" is old English for hold on tight.

24:25

"Phison" is the Greek form of Pishon, named in Genesis 2 as one of the four rivers flowing out of Eden. The Tigris is one of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia. "The time of the new fruits" is spring, when the rivers run high with melted snow and the first produce comes in. All four rivers in verses 25 to 27 are named at their fullest moment.

24:26

The Jordan runs over its banks in spring, at the barley harvest, a detail the book of Joshua also notes. The Euphrates is the other great Mesopotamian river.

24:27

"Geon" is the Greek form of Gihon, another of the four rivers of Eden in Genesis 2, which some ancient Jewish writers identified with the Nile. The "vintage" is the grape harvest, in the autumn.

24:28

"The first man" is Adam, the first human being; "the last" is the last person who will ever live. The pair is a way of saying that no one from the beginning of the human race to its end has taken the measure of her.

24:30

The speaker changes here. From this point to the end of the chapter it is the book's author talking about his own work, picturing himself as a small channel led off from Wisdom's river to irrigate a garden, and then finding the channel grown past all expectation.

24:33

Prophecy is a message from God, spoken out loud for everyone to hear.