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The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) contains the sayings of Ben Sira, arguably the last of Israel’s wise men and its first scribe, whose world was defined and dominated by Greek ideas and ideals. This Hellenistic worldview challenged the adequacy of the religion passed down to Palestinian Jews of the second century B.C.E. by their ancestors. Ben Sira’s training in both Judaic and Hellenistic...

all wisdom has its origin in God (v 1) and is given as a gift to those whom God chooses (vv 9–10). V 1 can be considered the topic sentence of the whole book. In vv 1, 4, and 8, God is declared to be the source and seat of wisdom from eternity; cf. Prov 2:6; 8:22–23, 30; Job 12:13; Wis 7:26–27; 9:4, 6; John 1:1–2; Jas 1:5, 17. For the expression “the sand of the seashores” (v 2a), cf. Gen 32:13; 1 Sam 13:5; Ps 78:27. The idea of numbering [Gr exarithmēsei] “the drops of rain” (v 2a) may be derived
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