Ecclesiasticus 34: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter says that dreams, divinations, and soothsayings are empty, and that no one should set his heart on them unless they are sent from the Most High; dreams have deceived many. It praises the understanding that comes from travel and experience, and describes the Lord as protection, support, and shade for those who love him. It then says that offerings paid for with goods wrongly gotten or taken from the poor are not accepted, that cheating the needy or a worker of wages is like shedding blood, and that fasting for sins and then repeating them gains nothing.

Claim by Claim

1. 34:1
   • The hopes of a man without understanding are empty and false.
   • Dreams give fools false elevation.
2. 34:2
   • Whoever pays attention to dreams is like a man grabbing at a shadow.
   • Whoever pays attention to dreams is like a man chasing the wind.
3. 34:3
   • What is seen in dreams is a mirror image of something else.
   • The vision of dreams is like the likeness of a face opposite a face.
4. 34:4
   • Nothing clean can come from an unclean thing.
   • Nothing true can come from something false.
5. 34:5
   • Divinations are empty.
   • Soothsayings are empty.
   • Dreams are empty.
   • The heart imagines things, like the heart of a woman in labour.
6. 34:6
   • If dreams are not sent as a visitation from the Most High, you should not set your heart on them.
7. 34:7
   • Dreams have led many astray.
   • Those who put their hope in dreams have fallen.
8. 34:8
   • The law will be fulfilled without any lie.
   • Wisdom is complete in a faithful mouth.
9. 34:9
   • A man who has travelled knows many things.
   • A man of much experience will speak with understanding.
10. 34:10
    • A man who has no experience knows little.
    • A man who has travelled grows in shrewdness.
11. 34:11
    • The speaker says he saw many things in his travels.
    • The speaker says his understanding is greater than his words can express.
12. 34:12
    • The speaker says he was often in danger of death.
    • The speaker says he was preserved because of these experiences.
13. 34:13
    • The spirit of those who fear the Lord will live.
    • Their hope is in the one who saves them.
14. 34:14
    • Whoever fears the Lord will not be frightened.
    • Whoever fears the Lord will not be a coward.
    • The Lord is his hope.
15. 34:15
    • Blessed is the soul of the one who fears the Lord.
    • The question is asked: to whom does he look?
    • The question is asked: who is his support?
16. 34:16
    • The eyes of the Lord are on those who love him.
    • He is a mighty protection.
    • He is a strong support.
    • He is a shelter from scorching heat.
    • He is a shade from the noonday sun.
    • He is a guard against stumbling.
    • He is a help against falling.
17. 34:17
    • He lifts up the soul.
    • He gives light to the eyes.
    • He gives health.
    • He gives life.
    • He gives blessing.
18. 34:18
    • The offering of one who sacrifices something wrongfully obtained is a mockery.
    • The gifts of unjust men are not acceptable.
19. 34:19
    • The Most High takes no pleasure in the offerings of the wicked.
    • He is not appeased for sin by many sacrifices.
20. 34:20
    • Whoever offers a sacrifice from the goods of the poor acts like one who kills a son in front of his father.
21. 34:21
    • The bread of the needy is their life.
    • Whoever deprives the needy of their bread is a man of blood.
22. 34:22
    • Whoever takes away his neighbour's livelihood murders him.
    • Whoever cheats a hired worker of his wages sheds blood.
23. 34:23
    • If one man builds and another tears down, they gain nothing but toil.
24. 34:24
    • If one man prays and another curses, the question is asked whose voice the Lord will hear.
25. 34:25
    • If a man washes himself after touching a corpse and then touches it again, his washing gains him nothing.
26. 34:26
    • So it is with a man who fasts for his sins and then goes and does the same things again.
    • The question is asked: who will hear his prayer?
    • The question is asked: what does his self-humbling profit him?

Words Worth Explaining

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

34:1

Dreams were widely treated in the ancient world as a channel for messages from the gods, and there was a working trade in dream interpretation. That is the practice being argued against here. To be "lifted up" by a dream is to be buoyed up with a confidence that has nothing under it.

34:3

The comparison is to a reflection: a face bending over water or a mirror and meeting its own image. The likeness is exact and completely insubstantial, which is the point of the comparison.

34:4

"Clean" and "unclean" here are the vocabulary of ritual purity rather than of dirt. An unclean thing or person could not be brought near what was holy until a prescribed rite had dealt with it. Verse 25 returns to the same vocabulary.

34:5

Divination is reading the future from signs: the markings of a sacrificed animal's liver, the flight of birds, the fall of lots. Soothsaying is the announcing of what is to come, whether from omens or from claimed inspiration. Both were ordinary professions across the ancient Near East, and both are forbidden in Israel's law. The second half of the verse is compressed and its sense is disputed, but it seems to mean that the mind under strain throws up vivid pictures, as a woman in labor does.

34:6

A "visitation" is a moment when God steps in and acts, whether to rescue or to judge. The word marks the one exception being allowed: a dream counts for something only if it was sent deliberately.

34:8

"The law" is the Torah, the instruction given to Israel through Moses and read aloud in the assemblies of the writer's day. It is being set against dreams and divination as the source of knowledge that can be relied on.

34:9

The Greek manuscripts and the old versions differ here by a single word. The King James follows a reading that means "a man who has traveled"; other witnesses read "a man who has been taught," which is why some modern translations say "well-instructed" instead. Both readings then run on into the same praise of experience.

34:12

Ancient travel meant bandits, shipwreck and sickness far from anyone who knew you, so the danger of death is literal rather than figurative. What brought him through is left open: "these things" may mean the experience he had just described, or the dangers themselves, or what he goes on to say in the next verses.

34:13

"Fear of the Lord" is this book's standing phrase for a whole way of living: reverence for God carried out in practice. It does not mean fright. The next verse turns on exactly that difference, since the person who fears God in this sense is the one who is not afraid of anything else.

34:15

"Soul" in this vocabulary is the whole living person, the self, rather than a part of a person that could be separated from the body.

34:16

The heat is the scorching wind off the desert, which could wither a crop in a day, and shade at midday was a matter of survival rather than comfort. All four images are of shelter and footing given to someone out in the open.

34:17

Bright eyes were the ordinary sign of health and strength in this idiom, and dull or darkened eyes the sign of exhaustion, grief or approaching death. To make someone's eyes bright is to bring them back to life.

34:18

In 1611 "ridiculous" meant laughable in the sense of being held up to mockery, not silly. The Greek says the offering is made in mockery. An offering was supposed to come out of what the worshiper lawfully owned, so a gift bought with property taken from someone else turned the act itself into a joke.

34:19

"Pacified for sin" is the language of atonement: sacrifices were understood to settle what stood between a worshiper and God. What is being denied is that offering a great many of them can do this for someone who continues doing wrong.

34:20

This is a picture of the worst hurt one person could do to another. The writer uses it to show how bad it is to steal from poor people.

34:21

"A man of blood" is a fixed Hebrew expression for someone with blood on his hands, that is, a murderer. The bread of the needy is called their life because for a person with no reserves there is no difference between the two.

34:22

Day laborers were hired and paid one day at a time, and the day's wage bought that evening's food for the household. Israel's law required the wage to be handed over before sundown for exactly this reason (Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 24). Holding it back overnight was not a late payment but a night with nothing to eat.

34:24

To curse is to call down harm on someone by invoking God against them, a formal spoken act rather than foul language. The two voices in the verse are appealing to the same power for opposite outcomes.

34:25

Touching a corpse made a person ritually unclean for seven days. The prescribed remedy was washing, together with being sprinkled on the third and seventh days with water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer (Numbers 19). Until the process was finished the person could not come near the sanctuary.

34:26

Fasting, going without food for a set time, was the standard outward sign of grief and of repentance, often accompanied by torn clothes and ashes. "Humbling" is the same idea in another word: deliberately bringing yourself low.