Ecclesiasticus 43: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter praises God by walking through the works of the sky and the weather: the clear sky, the sun, the moon and its seasons, the stars, the rainbow, snow, lightning, clouds, hail, thunder, wind, frost, ice, mist and dew. It then turns to the sea, its dangers, and the creatures in it, and says that by God's word all things hold together. It closes by saying that words fall short, that God is greater than all his works, that people should exalt him with all their strength and still never go far enough, and that only a few of his works have been seen.

Claim by Claim

1. 43:1
   • The height has a pride or splendor.
   • The firmament is clear and pure.
   • Heaven has a beauty or form.
   • Heaven appears as a vision of glory.
2. 43:2
   • The sun appears.
   • The sun declares or announces at its rising.
   • The sun is a marvellous instrument.
   • The sun is the work of the Most High.
3. 43:3
   • At noon the sun parches the land.
   • No one can withstand the sun's burning heat.
4. 43:4
   • A man blowing a furnace works in heat.
   • The sun burns the mountains three times more than a furnace does.
   • The sun breathes out fiery vapours.
   • The sun sends forth bright beams.
   • The sun's beams dim the eyes.
5. 43:5
   • The Lord who made the sun is great.
   • At the Lord's word the sun's course is hastened.
6. 43:6
   • The moon serves in its season.
   • The moon is for a declaration of times.
   • The moon is a sign of the world or age.
7. 43:7
   • The sign of feasts comes from the moon.
   • The moon is a light that decreases after reaching its fullness.
8. 43:8
   • The month is named after the moon.
   • The moon increases wonderfully in its changing.
   • The moon is an instrument of the hosts above.
   • The moon shines in the firmament of heaven.
9. 43:9
   • The stars are the beauty of heaven.
   • The stars are the glory of the heavens.
   • The stars are an ornament giving light.
   • The Lord is in the highest places.
10. 43:10
    • At the commandment of the Holy One the stars stand in their appointed order.
    • The stars never faint in their watches.
11. 43:11
    • The hearer is told to look upon the rainbow.
    • The hearer is told to praise him that made the rainbow.
    • The rainbow is very beautiful in its brightness.
12. 43:12
    • The rainbow compasses the heaven about with a glorious circle.
    • The hands of the Most High have stretched out the rainbow.
13. 43:13
    • By his commandment he makes the snow fall.
    • He swiftly sends the lightnings of his judgment.
14. 43:14
    • Because of this the storehouses are opened.
    • Clouds fly forth like birds.
15. 43:15
    • By his great power he makes the clouds strong.
    • The hailstones are broken small.
16. 43:16
    • At his appearing the mountains are shaken.
    • At his will the south wind blows.
17. 43:17
    • The noise of his thunder rebukes the earth and makes it tremble.
    • The northern storm rebukes the earth.
    • The whirlwind rebukes the earth.
    • He scatters the snow like birds flying.
    • The snow's falling down is like locusts settling.
18. 43:18
    • The eye marvels at the beauty of the snow's whiteness.
    • The heart is astonished at the snow's falling.
19. 43:19
    • He pours hoarfrost on the earth like salt.
    • When the frost is congealed it forms points like sharp stakes.
20. 43:20
    • The cold north wind blows.
    • The water is congealed into ice.
    • The ice settles upon every gathering of water.
    • The ice clothes the water as with a breastplate.
21. 43:21
    • The cold devours the mountains.
    • The cold burns the wilderness.
    • The cold consumes the grass like fire.
22. 43:22
    • A mist coming speedily is a remedy for all things.
    • A dew coming after heat refreshes.
23. 43:23
    • By his counsel he calms the deep.
    • He plants islands in the deep.
24. 43:24
    • Those who sail on the sea tell of the sea's danger.
    • When we hear of it with our ears we marvel at it.
25. 43:25
    • In the sea are strange and wondrous works.
    • In the sea is a variety of all kinds of living creatures.
    • Sea monsters or whales are created.
26. 43:26
    • By him the end or outcome of them has prosperous success.
    • By his word all things hold together.
27. 43:27
    • We may speak much and still come short.
    • In sum, he is all.
28. 43:28
    • We are unable to magnify him adequately.
    • He is great above all his works.
29. 43:29
    • The Lord is terrible.
    • The Lord is very great.
    • The Lord's power is marvellous.
30. 43:30
    • When you glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as you can.
    • Even then he will far exceed your exalting.
    • When you exalt him, put forth all your strength.
    • Do not be weary.
    • You can never go far enough in praising him.
31. 43:31
    • No one has seen him such that he might tell of him.
    • No one can magnify him as he is.
32. 43:32
    • There are greater things hidden than these.
    • We have seen only a few of his works.
33. 43:33
    • The Lord has made all things.
    • He has given wisdom to the godly.

Words Worth Explaining

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

43:1

This chapter continues a long hymn of praise that began at 42:15, working through the sun, moon, stars, weather and sea in turn. "Pride" here means splendor or magnificence, the thing a height can rightly boast of, and not arrogance. "Shew" is only the old spelling of "show." Note also that 1611 English used "his" as the possessive for things of no gender, where we now say "its": "his glorious shew" means the sky's display, and "his rising" in the next verse means the sun's rising. Throughout the chapter "heaven" means the visible sky overhead.

43:2

"Instrument" translates a Greek word for a made object, a vessel or implement. The sun is being described as a piece of workmanship, not as a tool for measuring or a musical one. The verb behind "declaring" and "tells its news" is the one used of a herald making a public announcement.

43:3

"Abide" in 1611 meant to withstand or endure something, not to remain or to live somewhere. The question is who could survive the heat.

43:4

A furnace worker forced air into the coals with bellows to drive the heat up, so "a man blowing a furnace" is the hottest job the writer's readers knew. "Three times more" is a round way of saying far hotter still, not a measurement.

43:6

The Jewish calendar was lunar. Each month began when the new crescent was first sighted, so the moon was the working instrument of timekeeping, fixing the dates of everything in the year.

43:7

Festivals fell on fixed days of the lunar month, Passover on the fourteenth for example, so the moon's phase itself announced when a feast had come. "A light that decreaseth in her perfection" means that once the moon is full it begins to wane.

43:8

"The month is called after her name" is a remark about vocabulary: in Hebrew the word for month comes from the word for new, as in new moon, and in Greek the words for moon and month are the same root. "The armies above" is the ancient phrase "the host of heaven," the sun, moon and stars pictured as troops drawn up in ranks. "Firmament" is the sky imagined as a solid dome or vault stretched over the earth.

43:10

"Watches" are shifts of sentry duty through the night. The stars are pictured as guards who hold their assigned posts and never flag.

43:11

A reader of this book would connect the rainbow with the story in Genesis 9, where God sets the rainbow in the cloud after the flood as a standing sign of his promise.

43:12

"Compasseth the heaven about" means encircles the sky. The image of hands bending it is exact: in both Hebrew and Greek the word for a rainbow is the ordinary word for an archer's bow, so the rainbow is a bow that God has strung and drawn.

43:13

The 1611 spelling "aplace" is generally read as "apace," meaning swiftly. "Lightnings of his judgment" is the older plural for repeated flashes.

43:14

"Treasures" in 1611 meant treasuries, that is, storehouses. Ancient writers pictured snow, hail, rain and wind as kept in stores up in the sky and released at God's word; Job 38:22 speaks the same way of the treasuries of snow and hail.

43:15

Hailstones are little balls of ice that fall from the clouds.

43:16

In this part of the world the south wind blows off the desert and is scorching, while the north wind, in verse 20, is the cold one. The contrast the writer is drawing depends on that geography.

43:17

"Grasshopper" was the ordinary English word in 1611 for a locust, and "lighting" means alighting, coming down to settle. The picture is a locust swarm dropping onto a field in a dense layer, which is how heavy snowfall looks.

43:19

Hoarfrost is the white crystalline frost that forms on cold clear nights, fine enough to look like scattered salt. "Congealed" simply means frozen. "Sharp stakes" renders a word for thorns or points: when the frost sets hard it stands up in little spikes.

43:20

A breastplate is body armor, a plate of metal or metal scales worn over the chest. The ice is pictured as armor plating laid across the surface of the water.

43:21

Hard frost scorches and kills plants, and ancient writers described that damage in the language of burning, much as we still speak of frostburn. The subject of "it" is the cold.

43:22

"Present" in 1611 meant immediate or prompt, so "a present remedy" is an instant cure. The word behind "remedy" is the ordinary Greek word for healing. In a hot dry climate a sudden mist or a heavy dew was what saved the crops.

43:23

"The deep" is a standing term for the open sea, the great mass of ocean water. The islands are spoken of as planted, that is, set firmly in place in it like something rooted.

43:25

"Whales" translates a Greek word meaning the huge creatures of the sea, sea monsters of any kind, rather than whales in the modern zoological sense. It is the same word used in the Greek Bible of the great fish that swallowed Jonah.

43:26

This verse is obscure in the Greek and the ancient copies differ. One reading gives "messenger" or "angel," producing something like "because of him his messenger prospers on his way"; the reading behind the KJV takes the word as the end or outcome of all these things. "Consist" is the older sense of the verb, to hold together or stay in one piece, not the modern "consist of."

43:27

"Come short" means fall short, run out of words before the subject runs out. "He is all" renders an extremely compressed Greek phrase, literally "he is the all," which has been understood both as "he is everything" and as "the sum of the matter is: he is."

43:28

"Magnify" means to declare someone great, to praise them as great. It does not mean to make bigger. The same word returns in verse 31.

43:29

"Terrible" in 1611 meant awe-inspiring, the kind of thing that stops you where you stand. It did not carry the modern sense of "very bad." "Marvellous" means causing wonder.

43:30

"Exalt" means to lift someone high in speech, to praise them as high. The instruction is about how far praise can be pushed, with the answer that it can never reach far enough.

43:33

This closes the hymn to the works of creation that began at 42:15. "The godly" translates a word for the devout, those who keep faith with God, and the mention of wisdom returns to the subject the book as a whole is about.