A second-century-BCE Jewish wisdom book of proverbs, praise, and practical ethics, written by a Jerusalem sage named Jesus ben Sirach and translated into Greek by his grandson.
Sirach, also called Ecclesiasticus, is one of the longest wisdom books to survive from the Second Temple period. It was composed in Hebrew in Jerusalem around 180 BCE by a scribe and teacher named Jesus son of Sirach, then translated into Greek in Egypt decades later by his grandson, who supplies a prologue explaining the project. The book gathers proverbs, extended meditations, and personal reflection on subjects ranging from friendship, wealth, and speech to the fear of the Lord, honoring parents, and the discipline of study, closing with a long hymn praising Israel's ancestors from Enoch to the author's own contemporary, the high priest Simon.
The book unfolds less as a narrative than as a curated sequence of teaching units, moving from short aphoristic couplets in the early chapters toward longer set pieces later on: an extended personification of Wisdom speaking in her own voice in chapter 24, warnings about associating with the powerful, instructions on raising children and managing servants, and finally the sweeping "Praise of the Fathers" that runs from chapter 44 to chapter 50, cataloguing figures like Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and David before culminating in an extended portrait of the high priest Simon officiating at the Temple. The book closes with a first-person psalm of thanksgiving attributed to the author himself.
Sirach stands between the Testaments both in time and in canonical status, and it matters historically on several fronts. It is one of the few Second Temple wisdom texts whose author names himself and whose translator explains his own translation process, giving scholars a rare window into how a Hebrew book crossed into Greek for a diaspora Jewish audience. Its portrait of the high priest Simon and its praise of Temple ritual offer a snapshot of Jerusalem piety on the eve of the Maccabean crisis, and its influence on later Jewish and Christian ethical writing, including its echoes in the New Testament epistle of James, has made it a persistent touchstone for reconstructing the moral vocabulary of the era.
“ALL wisdom is from the Lord, and it is with him forever.”
— Sirach – Chapter 1
“The fear of the Lord is glory and boasting, and gladness and a crown of exultation.”
— Sirach – Chapter 1
“Whoever touches pitch will be smeared by it, and whoever keeps company with a proud man will become like him.”
— Sirach – Chapter 13
“I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and like a mist I covered the earth.”
— Sirach – Chapter 24
“Great toil has been created for every man, and a heavy yoke rests on Adam's children, from the day they emerge from their mother's womb until the day they are buried in the mother of all.”
— Sirach – Chapter 40
The book was composed in Hebrew by Jesus son of Sirach, a Jerusalem scribe and teacher, around 180 BCE. His grandson later translated it into Greek in Egypt and added a prologue describing that work, which is why the book is sometimes cited by the Latin name Ecclesiasticus.
It depends on the tradition. Sirach is canonical scripture in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments but is classified as apocryphal, non-canonical writing in Protestant and Jewish canons, which is why it appears here among the Apocrypha rather than in a standard Protestant Bible.
It is the long sequence running from chapter 44 through chapter 50 in which the author reviews Israel's great figures in order, from Enoch and Noah through the patriarchs, Moses, the judges, David, and the prophets, ending with an extended, vivid portrait of the high priest Simon officiating at the Jerusalem Temple.
The grandson who translated Sirach into Greek added a preface acknowledging that things said in Hebrew do not have exactly the same force when rendered into another language, and asking readers for patience with any shortfalls in the translation. It is one of the earliest surviving ancient statements of translation theory.
It is a wisdom book in the same broad genre as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, mixing short practical proverbs with longer poetic and reflective passages, including personified Wisdom speaking in her own voice and an extended closing hymn of thanksgiving.
Yes, particularly in passages like chapter 40's meditation on toil and mortality, which surveys the anxieties and hardships common to all people 'from the one sitting on a throne in glory to the one humbled in dust and ashes,' though the book's outlook on the afterlife is notably more this-worldly than later apocalyptic Jewish and Christian writing.
Sirach's ethical maxims on speech, humility, and practical conduct are widely thought to have influenced the New Testament letter of James, and its wisdom themes echo in other early Christian writings, even though the book itself was written roughly two centuries before those texts.
Simon son of Onias was the high priest in Jerusalem during the author's own lifetime, and chapter 50 gives an extended, ceremonial description of him presiding over Temple worship, offering historians a rare eyewitness-style portrait of high priestly ritual before the Maccabean revolt.