Ecclesiasticus 51: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter opens with a prayer of thanks for being rescued from slander, from an accusation made to the king, and from death itself, and it recalls how the speaker prayed when no human help came. It then turns to a poem about seeking wisdom from youth onward, praying for her at the temple, working for her, and gaining learning and rest. It closes by calling the untaught to come to the house of learning, take up the yoke of instruction, and work, with the promise that God gives the reward in his own time.

Claim by Claim

1. 51:1
   • The speaker says he will give thanks to the Lord and King.
   • The speaker says he will praise God his Saviour.
   • The speaker gives praise to God's name.
2. 51:2
   • The speaker says God is his defender and helper.
   • The speaker says God preserved his body from destruction.
   • The speaker says God preserved him from the snare of the slanderous tongue.
   • The speaker says God preserved him from lips that forge lies.
   • The speaker says God has been his helper against his adversaries.
3. 51:3
   • The speaker says God delivered him according to the multitude of God's mercies and the greatness of God's name.
   • The speaker says God delivered him from the teeth of those ready to devour him.
   • The speaker says God delivered him out of the hands of those who sought his life.
   • The speaker says God delivered him from the manifold afflictions he had.
4. 51:4
   • The speaker says God delivered him from the choking of fire on every side.
   • The speaker says God delivered him from the midst of the fire.
   • The speaker says he did not kindle that fire.
5. 51:5
   • The speaker says God delivered him from the depth of the belly of the realm of the dead.
   • The speaker says God delivered him from an unclean tongue.
   • The speaker says God delivered him from lying words.
6. 51:6
   • An unrighteous tongue brought an accusation against the speaker to the king.
   • The speaker's soul drew near to death.
   • The speaker's life was near to the realm of the dead below.
7. 51:7
   • They surrounded the speaker on every side.
   • There was no one to help the speaker.
   • The speaker looked for help from men.
   • There was no help from men.
8. 51:8
   • The speaker then remembered the Lord's mercy.
   • The speaker remembered the Lord's acts of old.
   • The speaker remembered that the Lord delivers those who wait for him.
   • The speaker remembered that the Lord saves them out of the hands of the enemies.
9. 51:9
   • The speaker lifted up his supplications from the earth.
   • The speaker prayed for deliverance from death.
10. 51:10
    • The speaker called upon the Lord, the Father of his Lord.
    • The speaker asked that God would not leave him in the days of his trouble.
    • The speaker asked that God would not leave him in the time of the proud, when there was no help.
11. 51:11
    • The speaker says he will praise God's name continually.
    • The speaker says he will sing praises with thanksgiving.
    • The speaker's prayer was heard.
12. 51:12
    • The speaker says God saved him from destruction.
    • The speaker says God delivered him from the evil time.
    • The speaker says that therefore he will give thanks and praise God.
    • The speaker says he will bless the name of the Lord.
13. 51:13
    • The speaker was still young before he went abroad.
    • While young, the speaker desired wisdom openly in his prayer.
14. 51:14
    • The speaker prayed for wisdom before the temple.
    • The speaker says he will seek wisdom out even to the end.
15. 51:15
    • The speaker's heart delighted in wisdom from the flower until the grape was ripe.
    • The speaker's foot went the right way.
    • The speaker sought after wisdom from his youth up.
16. 51:16
    • The speaker bowed down his ear a little.
    • The speaker received wisdom.
    • The speaker gained much learning.
17. 51:17
    • The speaker profited in wisdom.
    • The speaker says he will ascribe glory to him who gives him wisdom.
18. 51:18
    • The speaker purposed to do according to wisdom.
    • The speaker earnestly followed what is good.
    • The speaker says he will not be confounded.
19. 51:19
    • The speaker's soul wrestled with wisdom.
    • The speaker was exact in his doings.
    • The speaker stretched forth his hands to the heaven above.
    • The speaker bewailed his ignorances of wisdom.
20. 51:20
    • The speaker directed his soul toward wisdom.
    • The speaker found wisdom in pureness.
    • The speaker has had his heart joined with wisdom from the beginning.
    • The speaker says that therefore he will not be forsaken.
21. 51:21
    • The speaker's inward parts were troubled in seeking wisdom.
    • The speaker says that therefore he has gotten a good possession.
22. 51:22
    • The Lord has given the speaker a tongue as his reward.
    • The speaker says he will praise the Lord with that tongue.
23. 51:23
    • The speaker tells the unlearned to draw near to him.
    • The speaker tells them to dwell in the house of learning.
24. 51:24
    • The speaker asks why they are slow and what they say to these things.
    • The speaker says their souls are very thirsty.
25. 51:25
    • The speaker opened his mouth and spoke.
    • The speaker told them to buy wisdom for themselves without money.
26. 51:26
    • The speaker tells them to put their neck under the yoke.
    • The speaker tells them to let their soul receive instruction.
    • The speaker says wisdom is close at hand to find.
27. 51:27
    • The speaker tells them to see with their own eyes that he labored but little.
    • The speaker says he has gotten much rest for himself.
28. 51:28
    • The speaker tells them to get learning with a great sum of money.
    • The speaker tells them to get much gold by wisdom.
29. 51:29
    • The speaker wishes that their soul rejoice in God's mercy.
    • The speaker tells them not to be ashamed of praising God.
30. 51:30
    • The speaker tells them to do their work early, before the time comes.
    • The speaker says God will give them their reward in his own time.

Words Worth Explaining

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

51:1

The book has already closed once, at the end of chapter 50, with the author's name and a blessing. Chapter 51 is an appendix holding two separate poems: a prayer of thanks for rescue from enemies (verses 1 to 12), and a poem about the lifelong search for wisdom (verses 13 to 30). The first poem is written in the style of the thanksgiving psalms, where a person who has survived danger names what he was saved from and then praises God publicly for it.

51:2

In 1611 "forge" meant to hammer out or manufacture, as a blacksmith forges iron, so "the lips that forge lies" are lips that manufacture falsehoods. The last clause is uncertain in the Greek, which reads something closer to "you were my helper before those who stood by"; the King James takes the bystanders to be opponents.

51:3

"They mercies" is a misprint for "thy mercies," meaning your mercies. "Manifold" means many and of many different kinds.

51:4

Two pictures of danger, being hemmed in by a fire so close it takes away the breath, and being caught in a fire someone else started. A fire one did not kindle is an old way of speaking about trouble stirred up by other people, which fits the slander and false accusation described in the verses on either side.

51:5

"Hell" here translates the Greek word Hades, the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, not a place of punishment for the wicked. Older English used "hell" for that neutral realm of the dead. "The belly of hell" pictures the grave as a mouth that swallows a person whole, the same image used of Jonah inside the fish.

51:6

An accusation carried to a king was a matter of life and death. Under the Greek kings who ruled Judea in this period, an official or scribe denounced at court had little defense and could be executed without much process. The text names no king and gives no details of the episode, so the occasion is unknown.

51:7

"Compassed me on every side" means surrounded me. "Succour" is an old word for help or relief brought to someone in trouble, from a root meaning to run to a person's aid.

51:9

"Supplications" are urgent, humble requests. "Lifted I up my supplications from the earth" pictures the prayer of someone lying or kneeling low on the ground, the posture of a person in extreme distress.

51:10

"The Lord, the Father of my Lord" is awkward in the Greek and no one is certain what the line originally said; the surviving Hebrew version of this poem has a simpler address to God as father. The King James "in the time of the proud" follows a reading where the Greek more likely means that there was no help against the proud, that is, against arrogant enemies.

51:12

"They name" is a misprint for "thy name," your name. "The evil time" means a specific stretch of disaster in the speaker's life, not wickedness in general.

51:13

"Or ever I went abroad" is 1611 English for "before I ever traveled"; "or ever" simply means before. Travel was part of a scribe's training in this book (see 39:4), so the line means before he set out on his journeys. From here to the end of the chapter a second and separate poem begins. A Hebrew copy of it survives, and in Hebrew it is an alphabetical acrostic: each line starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet in turn, a pattern that cannot be carried over into English or Greek.

51:14

The temple is the temple in Jerusalem, and praying "before the temple" means standing in its outer courts, where ordinary worshipers could go. Wisdom is called "her" throughout this poem because the word for wisdom is grammatically feminine in both Hebrew and Greek, and this book regularly speaks of wisdom as a woman to be sought, courted and lived with.

51:15

An image from the vineyard, running from the first blossom on the vine to the ripened grape at harvest, standing for the speaker's whole life from boyhood to maturity.

51:16

"Gat" is the old past tense of "get," so this means gained. "I bowed down mine ear a little" describes the physical gesture of a pupil leaning in toward a teacher to catch what is said.

51:17

Giving glory to someone means telling everyone how great he is.

51:18

"Confounded" in 1611 meant publicly shamed or disgraced, not confused or puzzled, which is what the word suggests today.

51:19

"In my doings I was exact" means strict and precise in his conduct. Stretching out the hands toward the sky was the ordinary posture for prayer, palms open and lifted. "My ignorances of her" is an odd plural in the Greek and means the particular things about wisdom he failed to grasp; in this book the word also covers faults committed without knowing they were faults.

51:20

"Foresaken" is a misprint for "forsaken," abandoned or left alone.

51:21

The Greek says that his belly, or inward parts, was troubled. Ancient writers located strong feeling in the gut rather than the heart, and the line describes a physical churning of longing during the search, not calm study.

51:22

"A tongue for my reward" means the gift of trained, skillful speech, the equipment of a teacher. What he gained for his searching was the ability to say what he had found.

51:23

"Unlearned" means without formal schooling, not unintelligent. "The house of learning" is a school, and the invitation to "dwell" in it suggests a teacher advertising for pupils; the same phrase became the standard Hebrew name for a study house, the beth midrash.

51:24

The Greek of this line is difficult and is more naturally read as "why are you lacking in these things," that is, why do you still go without. The King James takes it instead as a rebuke for being slow to come.

51:25

A deliberate paradox, buying something without paying for it, and an echo of the invitation in Isaiah 55:1 to buy wine and milk without money. It sits in tension with verse 28, which tells the hearer to spend a great sum, and the text leaves that tension standing.

51:26

A yoke is the wooden bar laid across the necks of a pair of oxen to harness them to a plow or cart. Putting your own neck under it means accepting the harness of a pupil's discipline, taking on set hours, obedience and steady labor.

51:27

"How that" is old English for simply "how" or "that," and "I have but little labour" means I labored only a little. The speaker points to himself as visible evidence of the bargain he is offering.

51:28

The Greek says a great sum of silver, silver by weight being the ordinary money of the period. Teachers were paid, so this may be plain advice to spend real money on instruction; it stands beside the offer in verse 25 to get wisdom for nothing.

51:29

"Be not ashamed of his praise" means do not be embarrassed to praise him out loud, in front of others.

51:30

"Betimes" means early, in good time, while there is still time to do it.