Not of Equal Force

• Anchor Bible Dictionary — the article on Ben Sira (Sirach, Ecclesiasticus), and those on wisdom in the Old Testament, the Old Testament canon and the Septuagint.
• Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — the article on Ben Sira, and any on wisdom literature or almsgiving.
• Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — the articles on Sirach, on the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and on the Old Testament canon. Articles are named here by subject; their exact titles were not checked against the volumes.
• On the text — any article that separates the shorter Greek form (the Rahlfs text quoted here) from the longer one the King James English often follows, and that says which Hebrew manuscript it is reading. An article that speaks of ‘the Hebrew of Sirach’ as if it were one text is not usable for this book.

• Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible) — a full-length English commentary.
• Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew (Brill, 1997) — the text edition whose manuscript sigla the Hebrew file on this disk uses.
• Joseph Ziegler, Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach (Göttingen Septuagint) — the critical Greek whose verse numbers the Hebrew file follows. Not held.
• Solomon Schechter and Charles Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Cambridge, 1899) — the first edition of the Genizah leaves, held on this disk as page images and used by the file’s builder for spot-checks only.
• NETS (A New English Translation of the Septuagint), Sirach, translated by Benjamin G. Wright — an English made from the Greek. Not the edition quoted here; named because it is the obvious next step for a reader who wants the Greek in English.

It names the books three times, and never the same way twice.

• Prologue 1–2: διὰ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν … καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν κατ' αὐτοὺς ἠκολουθηκότων — through the law and the prophets and the others who followed after them.
• Prologue 8–10: τὴν τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πατρίων βιβλίων ἀνάγνωσιν — the reading of the law and the prophets and the other ancestral books.
• Prologue 24–25: αὐτὸς ὁ νόμος καὶ αἱ προφητεῖαι καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν βιβλίων — the law itself and the prophecies and the rest of the books.

The law is fixed; the second term shifts once, from the prophets to the prophecies; and the third term moves every time — the others who followed, the other ancestral books, the rest of the books. The prologue is commonly read as the earliest surviving witness to a three-part grouping of Israel’s books. That is a claim about all of ancient literature, and it cannot be checked from this disk. What can be measured is that the grouping is here, three times, and that its third member has no fixed name.

The date. ἐν γὰρ τῷ ὀγδόῳ καὶ τριακοστῷ ἔτει ἐπὶ τοῦ Εὐεργέτου βασιλέως — in the thirty-eighth year, under Euergetes the king. The Greek row does not say which Euergetes; the Clementine Latin calls him Ptolemy. The thirty-eighth year is commonly reckoned as 132 BC, of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II. Reported, not measured: nothing on this page rests on it.

Where. Egypt (row 28), for readers ἐν τῇ παροικίᾳ, in the sojourning — Jews living outside the land.

In Hebrew. Screened against the Masoretic Bible, 13 rows of MS A reach three consecutive words or more with some verse, and four of those 13 land in Proverbs: 7:6 with Proverbs 22:27, 8:1 with 3:30, 9:11 with 3:31, and 8:18 with 27:1. Two of the four are the prohibition form itself — do not quarrel with, do not envy a man of.

In Greek. Screened against every other unit of the Greek Old Testament, five rows of these chapters reach five words or more with a tie band of one from both sides. Two land in Proverbs (4:21 and 8:18); the others are the law-and-prophets phrase of the prologue (2 Maccabees 15:9), a line of Psalm 37 (2:6), and a string of small words (two pronouns, a conjunction, a preposition, an article and a noun) that happens to stand in Psalm 139 (6:12). See Stage 4.

Among these runs that point to one verse only, Proverbs is the book that recurs: four of the nine such Hebrew rows, and two of the five Greek rows (the Psalms also supply two in Greek, one of them the page’s own counter-example, 6:12). The page reports where the runs land; it does not say who learned from whom, and in one case — 4:21 — it cannot even say which book the sentence started in.

Medieval copies, and fragments of ancient ones. In this range the Hebrew is carried by three Cairo Genizah manuscripts — A (3:6–9:18, the longest-running witness, with gaps), C (scattered rows from 3:14 to 7:25) and D (7:18–8:18) — and by fragments of the Qumran scroll 2Q18 at 6:26–31.

MS C is not a continuous copy. Its 46 rows in this range are scattered — 8 in chapter 3, 5 in chapter 4, 9 in chapter 5, 14 in chapter 6, 10 in chapter 7 and none in 8 or 9 — and its transcriber notes that it sets 37:1–2 between 6:6 and 6:7, and 3:27 after 6:15. It is commonly described as an anthology of sayings, and its shape here fits that description.

MS A carries its own order too. It writes 3:25 after 3:26 and 3:27, and at several verses (4:10, 4:19, 4:27, 5:4, 5:6, 5:7, 5:14, 6:37, 7:6, 7:17, 9:3, 9:8, 9:9, 9:10, 9:13) it carries two lines under one Greek verse number. A Hebrew manuscript is not a Hebrew original; it is a later copy with its own history, and this page treats every line as a reading of a named manuscript.

The Greek addresses the hearer as child or son at nine verses — 2:1, 3:1, 3:12, 3:17, 4:1, 6:18, 6:23, 6:32, 7:3. The Hebrew says בני, my son, at eight — MS A at 3:8, 3:12, 3:17, 4:1, 4:20, 6:32 and MS C at 3:17, 3:18, 6:18.

Where both survive, they agree at five verses (3:12, 3:17, 4:1, 6:18, 6:32). The Hebrew has the address and the Greek does not at three (3:8, 3:18 in MS C, 4:20); the Greek has it and the Hebrew does not at one (7:3, where MS A begins אל תדע). 2:1, 3:1 and 6:23 have no Hebrew to compare. The voice that structures these chapters is not placed identically in the two languages.

In the Greek, wisdom is she. 4:15 ὁ ὑπακούων αὐτῆς — he who obeys her; 4:18 ends ἀποκαλύψει αὐτῷ τὰ κρυπτὰ αὐτῆς — she will reveal to him her hidden things.

In MS A, wisdom is I. 4:15 שומע לי — he who listens to me, and later in the same line בחדרי, in my chambers; 4:18 ends וגליתי לו מסתרי: — and I will reveal to him my secrets (our glosses).

Same poem, same verse numbers, same content — and a different speaker. The King James English follows the Greek (4:18, “shew him her secrets”). This is a comparison of person and suffix across two languages, not a word-run, and the page draws no conclusion about which voice is older.

All 265 rows, prologue and chapters together, against 7,927 verses: 264 reach one, 251 reach two, 115 reach three, 15 reach four, 1 reaches five, and nothing reaches six.

Ben Sira’s own chapters, 1:1–9:18, 229 rows: 221 reach two, 107 reach three, 14 reach four, and nothing reaches five. The prologue, 36 rows: 30 reach two, 8 reach three, and one reaches five. The single deepest New Testament contact in this stretch is not in the grandfather’s proverbs at all. It is in the grandson’s first sentence. And one row shares no word with the New Testament at all: the prologue’s last, ἐννόμως βιοτεύειν.

Prologue 1 → Acts 13:15 and Romans 3:21 — a run of five, tie band 2. τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν — of the law and of the prophets.

From the other side the band is also 2. Screened against all 30,348 Greek Old Testament units, Acts 13:15 reaches five and no further, at exactly two places — Sirach’s prologue and 2 Maccabees 15:9 (ἐκ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν); Romans 3:21 reaches five at the same two. The five-word form occurs in two Greek Old Testament units and two New Testament verses, and those are the four. The nominative form — ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται — stands at Matthew 7:12 and Luke 16:16 and nowhere in the Greek Old Testament files.

Acts 13:15: μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν — after the reading of the law and the prophets (our gloss), in a synagogue. Romans 3:21: Νυνὶ δὲ χωρὶς νόμου δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ πεφανέρωται μαρτυρουμένη ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν — but now apart from law a righteousness of God has been made manifest, witnessed by the law and the prophets (our gloss).

⚠️ The CATSS row division cuts the phrase the second time. At prologue 8–9 the same five words stand again — τοῦ νόμου | καὶ τῶν προφητῶν — split across two rows, so the row screen sees two and three. Joined into one continuous text, the prologue carries the phrase twice, and its deepest New Testament run is still five, band 2. Short colometric rows depress every run in the prologue.

What this is: the prologue and two New Testament writers naming Scripture in the same genitive phrase. It is not a citation in either direction, and the page does not say anyone read anyone.

James 1:2–4 and the testing chapter. Sirach 2 has testing (2:1) and endurance (2:14); James 1:2–4 has both ideas — and 2:1 shares no word form at all with any of the three James verses. Πᾶσαν χαρὰν ἡγήσασθε ἀδελφοί μου ὅταν πειρασμοῖς περιπέσητε ποικίλοις (our gloss: count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various trials). The best any of the three does against all 265 rows here is a single word, and each ties across many rows (bands 8, 43 and 234; James 1:3’s 43 include rows that share only the or that). The one that carries the theme is James 1:3’s endurance, ὑπομονήν, which stands at 2:14.

Hebrews 10:31 and the hands of the Lord. Sirach 2:18 ἐμπεσούμεθα εἰς χεῖρας κυρίου shares three words with 1 Chronicles 21:13 (ἐμπεσοῦμαι δὴ εἰς χεῖρας κυρίου, David’s choice) and only two with Hebrews 10:31 (φοβερὸν τὸ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς χεῖρας θεοῦ ζῶντος). The three-word form εἰς χεῖρας κυρίου stands in two Greek Old Testament units, 1 Chronicles 21:13 and here, and in no New Testament verse.

Luke 6:35 and the son of the Most High. The longest run is one word, reached by two different words — and and Most High, genitive in both — never side by side. The singular υἱὸς ὑψίστου is matched in the New Testament only by Luke 1:32, καὶ υἱὸς Ὑψίστου κληθήσεται; Luke 6:35’s plural υἱοὶ Ὑψίστου is matched in the Greek Old Testament only by Psalm 82:6 — ἐγὼ εἶπα θεοί ἐστε καὶ υἱοὶ ὑψίστου πάντες (CATSS Ps 81:6). And Luke 6:35’s deepest run anywhere in these chapters is with 2:8, not 4:10: three words, your reward, band 1. The Hebrew of 4:10, for what it is worth, has no Most High to match.

James 1:19 and the quick listener. One word: ταχὺς. The form occurs in seven Greek Old Testament units (two of them Sirach, 5:11 and 21:22) and in one New Testament verse, James 1:19 — ἔστω δὲ πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ταχὺς εἰς τὸ ἀκοῦσαι (our gloss: let every man be quick to hear). James 1:19’s own best against the whole Greek Old Testament is two words, shared with 485 units.

Matthew 6:7 and the repeated word. The longest run is one word; the verses share two word forms, not and in, never side by side. Προσευχόμενοι δὲ μὴ βατταλογήσητε ὥσπερ οἱ ἐθνικοί δοκοῦσιν γὰρ ὅτι ἐν τῇ πολυλογίᾳ αὐτῶν εἰσακουσθήσονται (our gloss: and when you pray, do not babble like the Gentiles, for they think that in their many words they will be heard). Its verb βατταλογήσητε occurs nowhere in the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units, in any form beginning with its stem; and no word beginning with the stem of either of Sirach’s verbs, ἀδολέσχει or δευτερώσῃς, occurs in the 7,927 New Testament verses. Matthew’s other key word, πολυλογίᾳ, belongs to a family that occurs once in the Greek Old Testament files — Proverbs 10:19, ἐκ πολυλογίας — and not in Sirach.

Fourteen rows of 1:1–9:18 reach four. Every one is a string of common words — and your heart (1:30 → Matthew 6:21), in your house (4:30 → Luke 19:5), stretch out your hand (7:32 → Luke 6:10), according to his will (8:15 → 1 John 5:14) — eleven of the fourteen at band 1, which here measures only that the exact case and order are uncommon. Three of them repay a closer look, and all three dissolve.

• 1:8 → Revelation 7:15, four words, band 1 — and band 1 from the other side too. καθήμενος ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου — God seated on the throne, in both. It completes only by grammatical case. Revelation has a participle of sit followed by on the throne(s) in eleven verses, in five different forms of words, and this exact form, ὁ καθήμενος ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου, only once. And Revelation 7:15’s own deepest Greek Old Testament run is five — with Leviticus 15:6, a person sitting on something that a man with a discharge has sat on, in a purity law, and with Psalm 41:4 (42:3). Sirach 1:8 is not even its best partner.
• 7:30 → Hebrews 1:7, four words, band 1. καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ, and his ministers. Hebrews 1:7 is a citation — it introduces Psalm 104:4 with he says — and against the Greek Old Testament it reaches ten words, band 1, with Psalm 103:4 (104:4). Sirach 7:30’s four words are four of the Psalm’s. Two texts touching a third.
• 3:8 → four words, band 5. Four of the five are honour your father — Mark 7:10, Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, Ephesians 6:2, the commandment of Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16 — and the fifth, Luke 24:19, shares a different four, in deed and word. A band of five is the measurement saying ‘formula’.

All 265 rows against the 28,946 Greek Old Testament units outside Sirach: 256 reach two, 176 reach three, 51 reach four, 10 reach five, 3 reach six, nothing reaches seven or eight — and one row reaches nine.

• 4:21 → Proverbs 26:11a (CATSS 33:11a) — nine, band 1; and 26:11a’s own best is 4:21, band 1. αἰσχύνη ἐπάγουσα ἁμαρτίαν καὶ ἔστιν αἰσχύνη δόξα καὶ χάρις. Proverbs reads ἔστιν αἰσχύνη ἐπάγουσα ἁμαρτίαν καὶ ἔστιν αἰσχύνη δόξα καὶ χάρις — ten forms, all of them in Sirach’s row, which also carries γὰρ as its second word. See the next answer; this is the page’s finding.
• 8:18 → Proverbs 27:1 (CATSS 34:1) — five, band 1; and Proverbs 27:1’s own best is 8:18, band 1. οὐ γὰρ γινώσκεις τί τέξεται — for you do not know what it will bring forth. Proverbs goes on, ἡ ἐπιοῦσα, the coming day; Sirach stops.
• Prologue 1 → 2 Maccabees 15:9 — five, band 1 both ways. The law-and-prophets phrase again.
• ⚠️ Prologue 27 → 2 Chronicles 16:1 — five, band 1 from Sirach’s side. τῷ ὀγδόῳ καὶ τριακοστῷ ἔτει, in the thirty-eighth year. A date formula, and from the other side it is nothing: 2 Chronicles 16:1’s own best is twelve words, with 1 Kings 15:17, its parallel. Band 1 from one side is not band 1 from both.
• ⚠️ 6:12 → Psalm 139:7 (CATSS 138:7) — SIX, band 1, and band 1 from the Psalm’s side too. σοῦ καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου σου — …you, and from your face. A fair-weather friend hides from your face; the psalmist cannot flee from God’s. Six words, unique both ways, and nothing but two pronouns, a conjunction, a preposition, an article and a noun. This is the page’s own proof that depth and uniqueness are not contact.
• 2:6 → Psalm 37:5 (CATSS 36:5) — five, band 1 both ways (σου καὶ ἔλπισον ἐπ' αὐτόν, …your way(s), and hope in him); 2:11 → Psalms 103:8 and 145:8, five, band 2, the Exodus 34:6 formula οἰκτίρμων καὶ ἐλεήμων ὁ κύριος; 1:9 and 4:30, five, bands 2 and 6; 4:4, six, band 7 — do not turn your face away from, a formula found in four Psalms and in three rows of Tobit’s two Greek recensions (seven units in all).

Two sentences of these chapters are, in Greek, unique twins of lines in Proverbs. 8:18 shares five words with Proverbs 27:1; 4:21 shares nine with Proverbs 26:11a. Measured from either end, each pairing has a tie band of one, though they are not the same size of contact: 4:21 carries every word of its Proverbs line, while 8:18 shares only its own closing clause, five of its ten words, and its first half and that of Proverbs 27:1 are different sayings. On the Greek evidence alone both look like unique contact of the same kind.

The Hebrew separates them.

8:18 is a twin in both languages. MS A’s כי לא תדע מה ילד is the Masoretic כִּ֤י לֹֽא־תֵ֝דַ֗ע מַה־יֵּ֥לֶד — the same five words, and no other verse of the 23,204 carries them. It is one word deeper than Proverbs 27:1 reaches anywhere inside the Hebrew Bible itself: its best there is four, with Ecclesiastes 11:2. And in both languages the run stops at the same place — at the subject of bring forth, where Proverbs has a day and Sirach has something else in Hebrew and nothing at all in Greek, whose verse ends there.

4:21 is a twin only in Greek. Its Hebrew survives in two manuscripts, and neither shares three consecutive words with any verse of the Masoretic Bible. The Masoretic Proverbs has no line numbered 26:11a; the ESV’s Proverbs has none; the Clementine Latin Proverbs has none. The sentence stands in Greek Sirach, Hebrew Sirach, Latin Sirach, English Sirach — and in Greek Proverbs.

273 manuscript rows of 3:6–9:18 against 23,204 verse units. MS A (186 rows): 84 share no two consecutive words with any verse, 89 reach two, 12 reach three, none reaches four, and one reaches five — 8:18. MS C (46 rows): 18 / 26 / 1 / 1 at zero, two, three and four. MS D (34 rows, many of them fragments): 28 at zero and 6 at two. The six 2Q18 rows are fragments, and reach nothing. The one marginal row (MS A’s margin at 3:14) reaches two.

The thirteen MS A rows at three or more: 3:12 and 3:13 (all the days of your / his life, bands 7 and 10 — a formula), 3:23 (1 Kings 19:7), 3:28 (Esther 2:7), 4:5 (Deuteronomy 15:9), 5:1 (Genesis 31:29), 5:7 (band 2), 5:12 (Judges 18:19), 7:6 (Proverbs 22:27), 8:1 (Proverbs 3:30), 8:17 (band 4), 9:11 (Proverbs 3:31) and 8:18 (Proverbs 27:1, five). Three-word band-1 hits like 3:23 — for it is too much for you, Elijah’s road in 1 Kings — are what coincidence looks like at this depth.

⚠️ 5:12 — two languages, two different partners. In Hebrew, MS C שים ידך על פיך shares four words with Judges 18:19 (שִֽׂים־יָדְךָ֤ עַל־פִּ֙יךָ֙, put your hand on your mouth), band 1, and MS A, which lacks the verb, shares three. In Greek, 5:12 shares one word with either Greek text of Judges 18:19 — and four, band 1, with Genesis 41:40, where ἐπὶ τῷ στόματί σου means that at your word all Pharaoh’s people will obey Joseph. The Hebrew points to an idiom; the Greek run is an accident of a preposition and a noun — though Greek 5:12 does carry the hand-on-mouth idiom of Greek Judges 18:19, in other grammatical cases, which a word-form run cannot see. Contrast 8:18, where both languages point to the same verse.

The divine name cuts runs. MS A and MS C write it ייי; the Masoretic text writes the four-letter name. Read as the same word, two rows move — MS A 5:4 (second line) from zero to two, and MS C 5:4 from two to three (the LORD, slow to anger, Numbers 14:18 and its kin). No headline figure changes; the counts above are the unmapped ones.

• The Hebrew Ben Sira has no loader in the shelf’s tooling yet. This page reads the transcription file directly, never turns it into a dictionary (rows are not unique per verse: doublets, several manuscripts, split lines), and tokenises it itself. Any token carrying a lacuna or restoration mark — brackets, dots, a question mark — is treated as a break that no run may cross. Fed through the Masoretic normaliser unchanged, a restored word such as נ[פש]: (MS A 4:1) would split into two false words.
• The Hebrew file is not numbered like the Greek file. It follows Ziegler; CATSS follows Rahlfs. In this range they differ only at 3:25 and 6:1 (see Versification), and the page aligned those by content. The file’s own notes say the two diverge in chapters 35–36; that is a later page’s problem, and no join on bare keys is safe there.
• The prologue’s chapter label is Prolog. The New Testament screen compares chapters as strings so that it can be included; until the day this page was built it compared them as numbers and failed on this book.
• The Greek New Testament loader returns MorphGNT’s normalised column (accents regularised, the movable nu written in brackets), which is right for measuring and wrong for printing. Every New Testament line printed here is read from the SBLGNT word column of the same files, and the self-check compares it character for character.

• The Hebrew is a transcription, not an edition. One unnamed Wikisource editor typed almost all of it, from the manuscripts, with occasional cross-reference to the Academy of the Hebrew Language’s database. It is unpointed (but for one word on this page), it is not a critical edition, and most of its rows have never been checked against a second source. The file’s builder spot-checked a few passages against the 1899 Schechter–Taylor text and the Qumran data. One of those spot-checks falls on a line this page prints: MS A 3:30, found identical word for word to the Schechter–Taylor text, end punctuation aside. Every other Hebrew line printed here rests on the transcription alone.
• Incomplete pages. In this range Wikisource marks one source page incomplete: the Qumran chapter-6 page, where 2Q18’s fragment 1 (6:14–15) and 6:20–25 are untyped. The Masada gaps and the vandalised MS A page (13:25–14:10, pinned to the revision before the vandal edit) fall outside this range.
• Ziegler’s critical Greek, and the longer Greek text-form. Not held. The KJV verses with no CATSS row (1:5, 1:7, 1:21, 3:19, 3:25) are commonly assigned to that longer form; this page can report that the English has them and the Greek file does not, and nothing more.
• The Syriac, the Old Latin, Ma’agarim, Beentjes. None held, none consulted.
• Proverbs 26:11a. Why the Greek Proverbs has a line the Hebrew Proverbs lacks, and where it came from, is a question for the scholarship on the Greek Proverbs, which was not consulted. The page reports the four witnesses and stops.
• The prologue’s place in the history of the canon. That it is the earliest three-part naming of Israel’s books is reported as a common reading, not checked.
• The date. 132 BC is a common reckoning of the thirty-eighth year of Euergetes; it is reported, not measured.
• The English prologue. The King James file this page reads (eBible’s 1769 text) has none, in any of its three formats. No printed 1769 King James is held, so what it carried cannot be checked directly; but two other English files on this disk do print the prologue — a second King James Apocrypha e-text (Project Gutenberg no. 124, which also prints a shorter prologue made by an uncertain Author) and an 1851 English Septuagint — so the omission is probably the eBible file’s. Neither was used, because this shelf prints one English column for these books and it is that file. The prologue’s English is therefore our gloss.
• Allusion. Every screen here finds verbatim contact. A run of one is not proof of independence, and a run of nine is not proof of borrowing.

• The English column is a different Greek text from the Greek column. The KJV translates a longer form: at 5:11 it carries and let thy life be sincere, which has no word in the CATSS row; at 1:18 and 2:11 it is fuller than the Greek beside it.
• At 5:1 the English file says the opposite of the other three witnesses. It reads “Set thy heart upon thy goods; and say not, I have enough for my life.” with no negative; the Greek row opens μὴ ἔπεχε, do not set; MS A opens אל תשען על חילך, do not lean on your wealth; the Latin opens Noli. Seven verses later the same file renders the same Greek verb phrase “Set not thine heart upon goods”. Whether the negative is missing from the printed King James or only from e-texts is not settled from this disk: the second King James e-text held here (Project Gutenberg no. 124) also reads 5:1 without it, while the 1851 English Septuagint file, whose Sirach often matches the King James word for word, has it. The page prints the file as it stands and says so here.
• Every gloss of the Hebrew and of the New Testament is ours. They are literal and they are marked, but they are one reader’s, and the Hebrew is unpointed: at 4:10 the same letters can be read and God or and do not, and the page says which it chose.
• 3:30 says that almsgiving atones for sins, and the page reports it as written. The Greek reads will atone; MS A reads an unpointed imperfect, atones or will atone; the Latin resists. The page describes a Second-Temple teacher’s sentence; it does not teach it. Pleasant Springs reads Sirach as a witness to its time, and for the church the question of what atones for sin is answered in the canon, not here. Against the New Testament this verse’s deepest run is two words, water and (Acts 8:36; 1 John 5:8).
• The Hebrew counts depend on a tokenising rule this page made. Breaking runs at every lacuna is conservative: it can only shorten runs. A different rule could lengthen some three-word figures; it cannot create the five at 8:18, which crosses no gap. The counts also depend on spelling. The screen matches exact consonants, and the manuscripts often write waw and yod where the Masoretic text does not. Read with every waw and yod ignored on both sides (a crude test), MS A’s zeros fall from 84 to 44 and its rows at three or more rise from 13 to 24; 8:18 stays at five, band 1, and both lines of 4:21 stay at two.
• The structure diagram’s boundaries are a reading. The markers are counted; where one block ends is judged, and is offered as a sequence with no centre.

• Skehan & Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible).
• Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew (1997) — the manuscripts in one volume. Not held.
• Ziegler, Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach (Göttingen). Not held.
• Schechter & Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Cambridge, 1899) — page images on disk, read only for the file’s spot-checks.
• NETS, Sirach (B. G. Wright) — the Greek in English.

• Some translators warn you, if you read the preface. Sirach’s grandson did: things said in Hebrew do not have equal force in another language, and that goes for the law, the prophets and the other books too. He applied the warning to his own work and, in the same breath, to the law, the prophecies and the rest of the books.
• Here is one place where a Greek book and its Hebrew differ. A sentence about two kinds of shame (ten Greek words; eleven in Ben Sira’s Greek, which has one more particle) stands in Greek Proverbs and not in Hebrew Proverbs — and in Ben Sira in every language held here. The Greek Bible and the Hebrew Bible are not always the same book, and it is fair to ask which one a quotation is from.
• The parallels that look strongest are often the weakest. Be quick to hear and James 1:19 share one word; do not repeat a word in prayer and Matthew 6:7 share no two words in a row; the testing verse, 2:1, and James 1:2–4 share none. The deepest New Testament contact in the whole stretch — preface and nine chapters together, since the nine chapters alone reach four — is five words of the translator’s preface naming Scripture. Measure before you repeat.
• The sentence itself is worth keeping. There is a shame that brings sin, and there is a shame that is glory and grace. Not all embarrassment is to be avoided; some of it is the right response to the right thing.
• One concrete response. Scripture itself gives this charge (Isaiah 1:17; James 1:27), and Ben Sira puts it as a father to the fatherless (4:10). This week, find out what one child without a father near your church actually needs, and meet one of those needs.