Ecclesiasticus 39: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter first describes the person who gives his mind to the law of the Most High: he studies ancient wisdom, prophecies, and hidden sayings, serves before great men, prays for pardon, teaches what he has learned, and leaves a name that lasts. The speaker then calls the holy children to bud and bloom and praise the Lord, and gives them words to say: all the Lord's works are good, done at the right time, and no one may ask why. The chapter goes on to list things made for human life and things made for vengeance, and ends by repeating that all the Lord's works are good and calling for praise.

Claim by Claim

1. 39:1
   • A man gives his mind to the law of the Most High.
   • He is occupied in meditating on that law.
   • He will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients.
   • He will be occupied in prophecies.
2. 39:2
   • He will keep the sayings of renowned men.
   • He will enter in where subtle parables are.
3. 39:3
   • He will seek out the secrets of grave sentences.
   • He will be conversant in dark parables.
4. 39:4
   • He shall serve among great men.
   • He shall appear before princes.
   • He will travel through foreign countries.
   • He has tried the good and the evil among men.
5. 39:5
   • He will give his heart to resort early to the Lord that made him.
   • The Lord made him.
   • He will pray before the Most High.
   • He will open his mouth in prayer.
   • He will make supplication for his sins.
6. 39:6
   • If the great Lord wills it, he shall be filled with the spirit of understanding.
   • He shall pour out wise sentences.
   • He shall give thanks to the Lord in his prayer.
7. 39:7
   • He shall direct his counsel and knowledge.
   • He shall meditate in the Lord's secrets.
8. 39:8
   • He shall show forth what he has learned.
   • He shall glory in the law of the covenant of the Lord.
9. 39:9
   • Many shall commend his understanding.
   • As long as the world endures, it shall not be blotted out.
   • His memorial shall not depart away.
   • His name shall live from generation to generation.
10. 39:10
    • Nations shall show forth his wisdom.
    • The congregation shall declare his praise.
11. 39:11
    • If he dies, he shall leave a greater name than a thousand.
    • If he lives, he shall increase it.
12. 39:12
    • The speaker has more to say.
    • The speaker has thought upon what he has to say.
    • The speaker is filled as the moon at the full.
13. 39:13
    • The speaker calls holy children to listen to him.
    • He calls them to bud forth like a rose growing by the brook of the field.
14. 39:14
    • He calls them to give a sweet fragrance like frankincense.
    • He calls them to flourish like a lily.
    • He calls them to send forth a smell.
    • He calls them to sing a song of praise.
    • He calls them to bless the Lord in all his works.
15. 39:15
    • He calls them to magnify the Lord's name.
    • He calls them to show forth his praise with the songs of their lips and with harps.
    • He tells them that in praising him they shall speak in the following manner.
16. 39:16
    • All the works of the Lord are exceedingly good.
    • Whatever the Lord commands shall be accomplished in its due season.
17. 39:17
    • No one may say, What is this? or, Why is that?
    • At the proper time all things shall be sought out.
    • At his word the waters stood as a heap.
    • At the words of his mouth the reservoirs of waters stood.
18. 39:18
    • At his commandment whatever pleases him is done.
    • No one can hinder him when he will save.
19. 39:19
    • The works of all flesh are before him.
    • Nothing can be hidden from his eyes.
20. 39:20
    • He sees from everlasting to everlasting.
    • There is nothing wonderful before him.
21. 39:21
    • A man need not say, What is this? or, Why is that?
    • He has made all things for their own uses.
22. 39:22
    • His blessing covered the dry land like a river.
    • His blessing watered it like a flood.
23. 39:23
    • He has turned waters into saltness.
    • So the heathen shall inherit his wrath.
24. 39:24
    • His ways are plain to the holy.
    • His ways are stumbling blocks to the wicked.
25. 39:25
    • Good things were created from the beginning for the good.
    • Evil things were created for sinners.
26. 39:26
    • The principal things for the whole use of man's life are water, fire, iron, salt, wheat flour, honey, milk, the blood of the grape, oil, and clothing.
27. 39:27
    • All these things are for good to the godly.
    • To sinners these same things are turned into evil.
28. 39:28
    • There are spirits created for vengeance.
    • In their fury they lay on sore strokes.
    • In the time of destruction they pour out their force.
    • They appease the wrath of him that made them.
    • Someone made them.
29. 39:29
    • Fire, hail, famine, and death were all created for vengeance.
30. 39:30
    • The teeth of wild beasts, scorpions, serpents, and the sword were created for vengeance.
    • The sword punishes the wicked to destruction.
31. 39:31
    • They shall rejoice in his commandment.
    • They shall be ready upon earth when there is need.
    • When their time comes they shall not transgress his word.
32. 39:32
    • From the beginning the speaker was resolved.
    • The speaker thought upon these things.
    • The speaker has left these things in writing.
33. 39:33
    • All the works of the Lord are good.
    • He will give every needful thing in its due season.
34. 39:34
    • A man cannot say, This is worse than that.
    • In time all things shall be well approved.
35. 39:35
    • The speaker calls for the Lord to be praised with the whole heart and mouth.
    • The speaker calls for the name of the Lord to be blessed.

Words Worth Explaining

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

39:1

The "But" points back to chapter 38, which described the plowman, the engraver, the smith and the potter: skilled men whose work leaves them no leisure for study. This chapter sets against them the scribe, the professional student of the sacred writings. "The law of the most High" is the Torah, the five books of Moses; the wisdom of the ancients and the prophecies cover the rest of Israel's scriptures, so the three phrases together sketch the whole body of text a scribe worked on.

39:2

"Parables" here translates a word covering proverbs, riddles, comparisons and pointed sayings in general, not narrative stories of the kind Jesus later told. "Subtil" in 1611 meant finely made or intricate, with no suggestion of deceit.

39:3

"Dark" means obscure, hard to see into, not evil. A "sentence" in this older English is a weighty saying or judgment, the sense that survives in the word sententious.

39:4

Scribes were career officials: secretaries, advisers and envoys attached to rulers. Foreign travel was part of the job and the source of the wide knowledge of human character claimed here. "Strange countries" means foreign ones, and "tried" means tested, put to the proof.

39:5

"Resort early" renders a verb built on rising at dawn. It carries both literal morning prayer and the idea of seeking something first and eagerly, before anything else.

39:7

Whose secrets is left open. The phrase can mean that the sage ponders God's hidden things, or that he does his thinking in private, or that he keeps his own counsel. The Greek pronoun does not settle it.

39:8

A covenant is a binding agreement with sworn terms. Here it is the agreement made at Sinai between God and Israel, whose terms are the law; hence "the law of the covenant".

39:9

To blot out was to sponge ink off a scroll, wiping a name out of a written record. A "memorial" in this English is the memory of a person kept alive by others, not a monument.

39:10

"The congregation" is the assembled community of Israel gathered for worship; the Greek word is the one later used for a church.

39:11

The Greek is read two ways. The King James takes the verbs as "if he die" and "if he live"; others read them as "if he continues" and "if he comes to rest", ending "it is enough for him".

39:12

Verses 12 to 35 are a hymn of praise, marked off from the teaching that precedes it. The full moon is an image of being filled to capacity.

39:13

"Holy children" is a teacher addressing his pupils: the "my son" of wisdom writing put into the plural. The "rose" is Greek rhodon, used loosely of any showy flower, and what grows beside a stream in this landscape may be the oleander rather than a garden rose.

39:14

Frankincense is a fragrant gum resin tapped from trees in southern Arabia and east Africa, imported at high cost and burned in temple worship, so the comparison is with the smell of the sanctuary.

39:15

The "harp" is the kinnor, a small handheld lyre with a sounding box and a handful of strings, standard in temple singing, not the tall modern concert harp.

39:17

"The waters stood as an heap" quotes the crossing of the sea in Exodus 15:8, where the water is described as piling up. The "receptacles of waters" are the storehouses or reservoirs in which ancient cosmology pictured God keeping the waters above and below the earth, to be released at his word.

39:20

"Wonderful" keeps its older sense: nothing causes him wonder, nothing takes him by surprise. The Greek can also be read as nothing being too marvelous, that is too difficult, for him, and the two senses are hard to separate.

39:22

The picture is of a great river overflowing its banks. In this part of the world the annual flood that soaked the ground was what made farmland fertile.

39:23

Turning waters salty points to the salt waste around the Dead Sea, remembered as country ruined by judgment (Genesis 19, Deuteronomy 29:23). "Heathen" translates a word meaning simply the nations, the peoples other than Israel, without the later sneering tone. An inheritance is the portion allotted to someone as his share, so wrath is what falls to them as their portion.

39:24

Wicked means people who choose to do wrong on purpose.

39:25

A sinner is a person who does wrong things and keeps doing them.

39:26

This is the basic store cupboard of an ancient household: water, fire for cooking and warmth, iron for tools, salt for seasoning and for preserving food, wheat flour, honey as the ordinary sweetener since there was no sugar, milk, wine, olive oil for cooking, lamps, washing and medicine, and cloth. "The blood of the grape" is an old set phrase for wine.

39:28

The Greek word means both "winds" and "spirits", and the ambiguity is genuine: the passage lists these alongside fire, hail and famine, yet speaks of them raging and obeying orders. "Sore strokes" are severe lashes, the blows of a whip. To "appease the wrath" of their maker is to spend the anger that sent them, so that it is exhausted.

39:29

Sword, famine, wild beasts and plague are a standard set of judgments in Israel's scriptures (Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 32, Ezekiel 14), which is why these particular items appear together in a list.

39:30

A scorpion is a small animal with claws and a stinging tail.

39:32

The "I" is the author of the book, a Jerusalem teacher named Jesus son of Sirach, writing about 180 BC; his grandson later translated the work into Greek.

39:34

"Well approved" means tested and found genuine, the word used of metal assayed for purity: given time, each thing will be shown to answer the purpose it was made for.