Ecclesiasticus 42: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter opens with a list of things a person should not be ashamed of: the law of the Most High and his covenant, honest reckoning with partners, exact scales and weights, bargaining with merchants, correcting children and punishing a wicked slave. It then gives advice on sealing up what is entrusted to others, on putting things in writing, on instructing the foolish and the aged, and on a father's sleepless worry over a daughter at every stage of her life, followed by warnings about looking at beauty and sitting among women. The second half turns to the works of the Lord: he searches out the deep and the heart, knows every thought and word, declares past and future, has declared what is past and what is to come, and no one can see enough of his glory.

Claim by Claim

1. 42:1
   • Do not be ashamed of these things.
   • Do not show favor to any person in a way that leads you into sin.
2. 42:2
   • Do not be ashamed of the law of the Most High.
   • Do not be ashamed of the covenant of the Most High.
   • Do not be ashamed of a judgment that gives the ungodly his due; whether this means acquitting him or sentencing him is left unresolved.
3. 42:3
   • Do not be ashamed of settling accounts with a business partner.
   • Do not be ashamed of settling accounts with travelling companions.
   • Do not be ashamed of the giving of an inheritance to companions.
4. 42:4
   • Do not be ashamed of exactness in scales and weights.
   • Do not be ashamed of acquiring much or little.
5. 42:5
   • Do not be ashamed of profit gained in trading with merchants.
   • Do not be ashamed of frequent correction of children.
   • Do not be ashamed of making a wicked household slave's side bleed.
6. 42:6
   • A seal is good where there is a wicked wife.
   • Lock things up where there are many hands.
7. 42:7
   • Whatever you hand over, hand it over by number and by weight.
   • Put in writing everything you give out and everything you take in.
8. 42:8
   • Do not be ashamed to instruct the senseless and the foolish.
   • Do not be ashamed to instruct a man of extreme old age who disputes with the young.
   • Doing so will make you truly instructed.
   • Doing so will make you approved in the sight of every living person.
9. 42:9
   • A daughter is a hidden cause of sleeplessness to her father.
   • Anxiety over her drives away sleep.
   • The father fears that in her youth she may pass the flower of her age unmarried.
   • The father fears that once she is living with a husband she may be hated.
10. 42:10
    • The father fears that while she is a virgin she may be defiled.
    • The father fears that she may become pregnant in her father's house.
    • The father fears that when she has a husband she may transgress.
    • The father fears that once she is living with a husband she may prove barren.
11. 42:11
    • Keep a strict guard over a headstrong daughter.
    • An unguarded daughter may make you an object of gloating to your enemies.
    • An unguarded daughter may make you the talk of the city.
    • An unguarded daughter may make you notorious among the people.
    • An unguarded daughter will shame you before a great crowd.
12. 42:12
    • Do not gaze at any person's beauty.
    • Do not sit among women.
13. 42:13
    • A moth comes out of garments.
    • A woman's wickedness comes out of a woman.
14. 42:14
    • A man's wickedness is better than a woman who does good.
    • There is a woman who brings shame and disgrace.
15. 42:15
    • The speaker will now call to mind the works of the Lord.
    • The speaker will recount what he has seen.
    • The works of the Lord come about by the words of the Lord.
16. 42:16
    • The sun gives light.
    • The sun looks upon all things.
    • The work of the Lord is full of his glory.
17. 42:17
    • The Lord has not enabled his holy ones to recount all his wonders.
    • The Lord Almighty firmly established those wonders.
    • The purpose of that establishing was that the universe should stand firm in his glory.
18. 42:18
    • He searches out the deep.
    • He searches out the heart.
    • He perceives their cunning devices.
    • The Lord knows all knowledge.
    • He looks upon the sign of the age.
19. 42:19
    • He announces the things that have passed.
    • He announces the things that are to come.
    • He uncovers the traces of hidden things.
20. 42:20
    • No thought escapes him.
    • Not one word is hidden from him.
21. 42:21
    • He has set in order the great works of his wisdom.
    • He exists from before the age and to the age.
    • Nothing has been added to him.
    • Nothing has been taken from him.
    • He has had need of no counsellor.
22. 42:22
    • All his works are desirable.
    • His works are a thing to behold, likened to a spark; whether the meaning is that even a spark of them is worth seeing or that what is seen is only a spark is left unresolved.
23. 42:23
    • All these things live and remain forever.
    • All these things serve every need.
    • All of them obey.
24. 42:24
    • All things are in pairs, one set opposite the other.
    • He has made nothing lacking.
25. 42:25
    • Each one of the pair confirms the good qualities of the other.
    • No one can be satisfied with seeing his glory.

Words Worth Explaining

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

42:1

Verses 1 to 8 are one running list, and it continues a catalog begun in the previous chapter, where the writer set out the things a person ought to be ashamed of. Here he turns the list over: these are the things no one should feel shame about. "Accept no person" is old English for showing partiality, treating someone differently because of who they are rather than by what is right; the warning is against bending a rule or a verdict to spare someone's feelings, or your own.

42:2

A covenant is a formal, binding agreement carrying obligations on both sides, and it was the standard term for the relationship between God and Israel. The second clause is genuinely unclear in the Greek: "judgment to justify the ungodly" can mean delivering an honest verdict even when it clears a person who does not honor God, or simply passing a fair sentence on such a person. "Justify" in 1611 English means to declare in the right, to acquit.

42:3

"Reckoning" is settling accounts, working out who owes what to whom. The partners are joint investors in a trading venture; the travelers are companions who shared the costs and the risks of a journey by caravan. Both arrangements ended in an itemized settlement, and the advice is not to be embarrassed about demanding one. The "gift of the heritage of friends" is a share handed out of property that friends have inherited.

42:4

A balance was a beam with a pan hanging at each end, the goods in one pan weighed against stone or metal weights the trader carried in a pouch. Shaved, swapped or mismatched weights were the standard fraud of the ancient market, so insisting on exact ones was a real protection, even if checking them in front of a seller looked small-minded.

42:5

"Indifferent" here does not mean uncaring. It stands for a Greek word meaning difference or profit in a price, so the phrase is about bargaining with merchants over what something will sell for. "Servant" in the King James regularly means slave: a household slave was legally property, and beating one was ordinary and lawful in the world this advice assumes.

42:6

A seal was a lump of clay or wax pressed with a signet ring or an engraved stone and set across a door, a jar, a chest or the mouth of a bag, so that nothing could be opened without visibly breaking it. It was less a lock than a tamper-proof mark: it did not stop a thief, it proved a theft.

42:7

Silver and goods alike changed hands by count or by weight rather than on trust, and a written memorandum was the only record either party had of a transaction. The advice is the standard practice of a steward answerable for someone else's property.

42:8

The middle clause is compressed and can be read two ways: teach the very old man who quarrels with the young, or correct him for quarreling. "Truly learned" means properly taught rather than scholarly, and "approved of all men living" means well regarded by everyone alive.

42:9

"Pass away the flower of her age" means pass the years in which she could still be married. Girls were normally betrothed in their early teens, and an unmarried daughter remained her father's legal and financial responsibility for as long as she stayed unmarried. "Hated" is legal language of the period for a wife rejected by her husband, the situation that ended in divorce, not simply a feeling about her.

42:10

An unmarried daughter's pregnancy fell on her father: he was her legal guardian, the marriage settlement agreed for her assumed her virginity, and the family's standing in the town went with it. "Misbehave herself" is a mild rendering of a word for a married woman's adultery, which the law treated as a capital matter. A marriage that produced no children could end with the wife sent back to her father's house.

42:11

A "byword" is a name that has turned into a stock example, the phrase people reach for when they want to name a disgrace. The word behind "shameless" carries the sense of headstrong or stubborn as much as immodest. The shame described is public and local: in a walled town everyone knew whose daughter she was.

42:12

The King James prints "every body's beauty" as two words, meaning any person's beauty; it is not "everybody's". The second half assumes a household or a gathering in which the women sat apart from male guests, so that taking a seat among them crossed a recognized line.

42:13

The proverb turns on the fact that a clothes moth is bred in the very cloth it eats away: the ruin comes out of the thing itself. The Greek of the second line repeats its noun in the same pattern, literally "from a woman comes a woman's wickedness".

42:14

"Churlishness" in 1611 English meant rough, surly, ungracious behavior; the Greek word behind it is the ordinary word for wickedness. The line is framed as a proverb about public honor and disgrace, and its second half narrows the comparison by specifying which kind of woman is meant.

42:15

The catalog of shame ends here. This line opens a long poem in praise of God's works that runs through the end of chapter 43. "In the words of the Lord are his works" points to making by command: what exists came to be at his word.

42:16

Glory means shining greatness that makes people stop and wonder.

42:17

"Saints" here does not mean holy people. It renders a word meaning holy ones, the angels or heavenly beings of God's court; even they, standing closest to him, are not given the power to give a full account of what he has made.

42:18

"The deep" is the abyss, the mass of water thought to lie beneath the earth and past the edges of the known world, the least reachable place there is; the heart was understood as the seat of thought and intention. The pair means the farthest place outside a person and the farthest place inside one. "The signs of the world" translates a phrase that can equally mean the signs of the age, the marks by which the course of time may be read.

42:19

"Steps" translates a word for tracks or traces, the footprints a thing leaves behind it. The claim is not only that God knows hidden things but that he uncovers the trail they left.

42:21

"Garnished" in 1611 English means arranged or set in order, not decorated. The Greek of the following clause is ambiguous about what can have nothing added to it: it may be God himself, or the works of his wisdom just named, which stand complete as they are.

42:22

The last clause is obscure in the Greek and has been read in more than one way: that everything God made is worth looking at, down to a single spark; or that even a spark gives light enough to see his works by. The King James preserves the oddity rather than smoothing it out.

42:23

"These things" are the created works described in the preceding lines. "Obedient" means they keep to the work assigned them, doing what they were made to do without failing.

42:24

The idea that creation is built in matched pairs, each thing set facing its opposite, appears elsewhere in this book: good and evil, life and death, light and darkness. "Nothing imperfect" means nothing left unfinished or half made; everything has its counterpart.

42:25

Most printings of the King James read "the good of another" here, and "or" is a slip of the press. The sense is that each member of a pair brings out and confirms what is good in the other.