§ 9. THE THEOLOGY OF THE BOOK

1. The Doctrine of God. Ben-Sira’s conception and teaching of the Almighty is very full; not only his orthodox belief, but still more his religious mind which so often expresses itself in his book, impelled him in the most natural way to refer very frequently to the Divine Personality, His attributes, and His relationship to men. First and foremost comes, of course, his teaching concerning the Unity of God, e.g. 42:21:

From everlasting He is the same;

and again in 36:5 (G 33:5):

That they may know, as we also know,

That there is none other God but Thee.

In the long section 43:1–26 Ben-Sira describes the divine activity in Nature, and he concludes (v. 27) with the words:

The conclusion of the matter is: He is all.6

The Greek (τὸ πᾶν ἐστιν αὐτός) might be thought to point to a pantheistic tendency, but the context makes it clear that all that Ben-Sira wishes to show is that God is to be discovered in all His works; the very definite personality which he always imputes to God amply proves that he was entirely free from all pantheistic tendencies. This teaching of God as the All-God leads on naturally to that of God as the Creator of all; here Ben-Sira gets his main inspiration from the Psalms, see the fine passage 42:15–43:33, and cp. also 39:16 and 42:21. In this last passage it is said that all created things are the products of the divine wisdom; this is further emphasized by the description of the all-knowledge of God in 42:18–25, see especially vv. 18, 19:

For Jahveh possesseth all knowledge, 7

And seeth what cometh unto eternity.7

He declareth what is past and what is future,

And revealeth the profoundest secrets.

The eternity of God also frequently finds expression, e.g. 18:1 ff.:

He that liveth for ever created all things together …

and 36:17 (G 22):

… That all the ends of the earth may know

That Thou art the eternal God.

Belonging to this cycle of conceptions is also the Holiness of God; this is taught, e.g. in 23:9:

Accustom not thy mouth to an oath,

Nor make a habit of the naming of the Holy One.

See further 4:14, 43:10, 47:8, 48:20.

Another side to Ben-Sira’s doctrine of God is that in which he deals with the relationship of God towards Israel on the one hand, and towards the Gentiles on the other. The more usual Jewish view that God is the God of Israel only is taught, e.g. in 17:17:

For every nation He appointed a ruler, 1

But Israel is the Lord’s portion;1

and the fact that the Wisdom of God belongs to Israel in a pre-eminent degree shows them to be in a special sense His people; see the whole passage 24:8 ff., especially v. 12:

And I [i.e. Wisdom] took root among an honoured people, 1

In the portion of the Lord (and) of His inheritance.1

Moreover, the whole section on the praise of Israel’s heroes of old (44–49) reveals the belief that Israel is a particularly favoured nation in the sight of God. On the other hand, Ben-Sira is not wholly particularistic; he realizes that God is the God of all the world, and therefore he sometimes strikes a universalistic note, e.g. in 18:13, 14:

The mercy of man is (exercised upon) his own kin,

But the mercy of God is (extended) to all flesh,

Reproving, and chastening, and teaching,

And bringing them back as a shepherd his flock.

He hath mercy on them that accept (His) chastening,

And that diligently seek after His judgements.2

The attributes of mercy and forgiveness here portrayed find very frequent utterance, and of course the same is true of the converse; God’s wrath strikes the wicked whether they be Jews or Gentiles. The doctrine of the divine Fatherhood also finds expression in our book. As Toy says, referring to the older view: ‘The old Israelitish idea of the divine love was, so far as we can gather from the literature, a purely national one. Jahveh was the father (Hos. 11:1) or the husband (Jer. 2:1, 3:4; Isa. 62:5) of Israel. In the later psalms more individual relation is expressed; Jahveh is said to pity them that fear Him as a father pities his children (Ps. 103:13). Gradually the paternal relation as expressing most completely the combination of guidance and tenderness came to be employed as the representative of God’s relation to man’;3 and he quotes several passages from the Apocrypha, among them 23:1 of our book:

O Lord, Father, and God of my life, 1

which certainly witnesses to a real belief in the Fatherhood of God in regard to the individual.

2. The Law. ‘About half the passages in which the Law is mentioned in this book are wanting in the Hebrew; in those which are extant in Hebrew the usual word rendered νόμος in Greek is תורה, but in 9:15 the Hebrew is certainly corrupt,1 in 44:20 the word is מצוה (“commandment”), and in 45:17 it is משפט (“judgement”). With three exceptions (2:16, 15:1, 49:4) νόμος is used without the article. In the Prologue it is used with the article three times, but in each case it is in reference to the threefold division of the Canon (ὁ νόμος, καὶ αἱ προφητεῖαι, καὶ λοιπὰ τῶν βιβλίων). On the other hand, the concluding words in the Prologue are: … ἐν νόμῳ βιωτεύειν. In 36:(EV 33:)3 the article is almost necessary grammatically.’4 Ben-Sira gives great prominence to the Law both in its ethical and ritual aspects, differing in this markedly from Proverbs, to which he is in other respects so much indebted; and the stress which he lays on the importance of the Law, and legal observances generally, marks his book out as perhaps the most striking link we have between the older and the newer Judaism, that is to say, the Judaism of post-exilic times and Rabbinical Judaism. But he uses the word ‘Law’ in a wide sense; and herein, too, we are able to recognize the way in which the teaching of this book leads over in so many respects to the later Rabbinism, for what Schechter says regarding the meaning of the term ‘Law’ in Rabbinic literature applies also to its meaning in Sirach: ‘The term Law or Nomos is not a correct rendering of the Hebrew word “Torah”. The legalistic element, which might rightly be called the Law, represents only one side of the Torah. To the Jew the word Torah means a teaching or instruction of any kind. It may be either a general principle or a specific injunction, whether it be found in the Pentateuch or in the other parts of the Scriptures, or even outside the Canon. The juxtaposition in which Torah and Mitzvôth, “teaching” and “commandments”, are to be found in the Rabbinic literature implies already that the former means something more than merely the Law.… To use the modern phraseology, to the Rabbinic Jew Torah was both an institution and a faith.’1 Torah is, therefore, to be understood in both an extended and in a restricted sense according to the general purport of the passage in which the term occurs.

We may note, then, first of all the general emphasis which Ben-Sira lays on the observance of the Law as being the prime duty of the people to whom Jahveh has given the Law; he says, for example, in 9:15:

With the intelligent let thy communing be,

And all thy converse in the Law of the Most High.

He teaches that there can be no honour for those who do not observe the Law:

A despicable race is that which transgresseth the commandment (10:19).

The duty of seeking the Law, of believing it, and of meditating upon its precepts is insisted on in 32:15–24:

He that seeketh out the Law shall gain her,

But the hypocrite shall be snared thereby.…

In all thy works guard thyself,

For he that so doeth keepeth the commandment.

He that observeth the Law guardeth himself,

And he that trusteth in Jahveh shall not be brought to shame;

and see also 39:1 ff. Ben-Sira urges men not to be ashamed of the Law (42:2), and recalls how the nation’s great heroes in the past observed it and were enlightened by it, and taught it to others (see 44:20, 45:5, 17, 46:14). The observance of the commandments of the Law is the one thing to be thought of at the approach of death (28:6).

Since the Law was given by God it is, like Him, eternal, and this brings us to what is perhaps the most interesting part of Ben-Sira’s doctrine concerning the Law, namely, his identification of it with Wisdom; for this implies the pre-existence of the Law, as well as its divine character (see further the section on Wisdom). This conception of the Law, which, as far as is known, is found here for the first time in Jewish literature, became later on, with one exception (viz. the doctrine of the unity of God), the most important dogma of Rabbinical Judaism.2 But the way in which the identification of Wisdom with the Law is taken for granted in Sirach makes it clear that Ben-Sira was not expressing a new truth, but one which had already received general acceptance. He says, for example, in 15:1:

For he that feareth the Lord doeth this

[i.e. seeks Wisdom, which is the subject of the preceding verses],

And he that taketh hold of the Law findeth her [i.e. Wisdom].

Again, the Law and Wisdom are used synonymously in 34:(G 31:)8:

Without deceit shall the Law be fulfilled,

And Wisdom is perfect in a mouth that is faithful.

So also in 21:11:

He that keepeth the Law controlleth his natural tendency, 3

And the fear of the Lord is the consummation of Wisdom.

This identification is further implied by ‘the fear of the Lord’ being both the true observance of the Law as well as the ‘beginning’ of Wisdom; both thoughts occur a number of times in the book. But the most direct assertion of the identity of the two is found in 24:23, where it is said:

All these things [i.e. things concerning Wisdom which are mentioned in the preceding verses] are the book of the covenant of God Most High,

The Law which Moses commanded (as) an heritage for the assemblies of Jacob.

The same is taught in 19:20:

All wisdom is the fear of the Lord,

And all wisdom is the fulfilling of the Law.

Ben-Sira taught, as we have seen, that the Law was eternal, a doctrine which is further illustrated by the way in which he identifies the Law with Wisdom, which is also eternal (see next section); the special point of interest in this connexion is that the doctrine of the existence of the Law before the Creation—a thoroughly Rabbinical doctrine—is seen to have been taught long before Christian times. As an example of the Rabbinical teaching reference may be made to the Midrash Bereshith Rabba 8, where it is said that the Torah is two thousand years older than the Creation; and in the first chapter (in the comment on Gen. 1:1) of the same Midrash it is said: ‘Six things preceded the creation of the world; among them were such as were themselves truly created, and such as were decided upon before the Creation; the Torah and the throne of glory were truly created.’

Another important point concerning the Law is Ben-Sira’s teaching on the spirit in which legal ordinances should be observed. ‘It might seem doubtful’, says Toy, ‘whether the introduction of the finished Law was an unmixed good from the ethical point of view. The code was largely ritualistic; it fixed men’s minds on ceremonial details which it in some cases put into the same category and on the same level with moral duties. Would there not hence result a dimming of the moral sense and a confusion of moral distinctions? The ethical attitude of a man who could regard a failure in the routine of sacrifice as not less blameworthy than an act of theft cannot be called a lofty one. If such had been the general effect of the ritual law we should have to pronounce it an evil. But in point of fact the result was different. What may be called the natural debasing tendency of a ritual was counteracted by other influences, by the ethical elements of the Law itself, and by the general moral progress of the community. The great legal schools which grew up in the second century, if we may judge by the sayings of the teachers which have come down to us, did not fail to discriminate between the outward and the inward, the ceremonial and the moral; and the conception of sin corresponded to the idea of the ethical standard.’1 Now the teaching of Ben-Sira on the spirit in which the sacrifices prescribed in the Law are to be observed is a striking illustration of what is here so truly said: in 34:18, 19 (G 31:21–23) he urges:

The sacrifice of the unrighteous man is a mocking offering,

And unacceptable are the oblations of the godless.

The Most High hath no pleasure in the offerings of the ungodly,

Neither doth He forgive sins for a multitude of sacrifices.

And again, a few verses later on, he says:

He who washeth after (contact with) a dead body and toucheth it again,

What hath he gained by his bathing?

So a man fasting for his sins

And again doing the same—

Who will listen to his prayer?

And what hath he gained by his humiliation?

Such words offer an eloquent proof of Ben-Sira’s spiritual conception concerning the observance of the Law.

3. The Teaching on Wisdom.

The divine character of Wisdom is graphically brought out in 24:3–5:

I came forth from the mouth of the Most High (cp. 1:1),

And as a mist I covered the earth;

In the high places did I fix my abode,

And my throne was in the pillar of cloud.

Alone I compassed the circuit of heaven,

And in the depth of the abyss I walked.

That Wisdom took her part in the creation of the world comes out clearly in the two following passages:

Before them all [i.e. the heavens and the earth] was Wisdom created (1:4);

from the words which follow a little later on Ben-Sira evidently conceived of Wisdom having been created in preparation for the work of Creation which was to come, for he continues in verse 9:

He Himself created her, and saw, and numbered her;

And poured her out upon all His works …1

The existence of Wisdom before the creation of the world is again, and more definitely, stated in 24:9 a:

He created me from the beginning, before the world.

This vivid personification of Wisdom is based on Proverbs, where the same thought finds expression in 8:22, 23:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way,

Before His works of old.

I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning,

Or ever the earth was. (See the whole passage, Prov. 8:22–31.)

The intimate relationship between Wisdom and the Almighty naturally involves the eternity of Wisdom, a truth set forth in the opening words of our book:

All Wisdom cometh from the Lord,

And is with Him for ever.

The same is implied in 24:9 b:

The memorial of me shall never cease.2

The personification of Wisdom is illustrated in another way when it is said that she takes up her abode among men, and invites them to come and dwell with her:

With faithful men is she, and she hath been established from eternity, 3

And with their seed shall she continue (1:15).

Come unto me, ye that desire me,

And be ye filled with my produce;

For my memorial is sweeter than honey,

And the possession of me than the honey-comb (24:19, 20).

It is characteristic of Ben-Sira’s attitude in desiring to show the superiority of the wisdom of Israel over that of the Greeks that he should represent Wisdom as having sought a resting-place among the nations of the world, but that Israel alone was worthy of her, and that among them, therefore, God bids her abide;4 he says in 24:7, 8 f., 12:

With all these [i.e. every people and nation] I sought a resting-place,

And (said): In whose inheritance shall I lodge?

Then the Creator of all things gave me commandment,

And He that created roe fixed my dwelling-place (for me);

And fire said: Let thy dwelling-place be in Jacob,

And in Israel take up thine inheritance.…

And I took root among an honoured people,

In the portion of the Lord (and) of His inheritance.

The thought of Wisdom dwelling among men is already taught in Proverbs (e.g. 8:31, 34 ff.), but Ben-Sira elaborates it, and in such a passage as that just quoted treats it with great poetical beauty.

Further, it is characteristic, not only of the Wisdom of Ben-Sira, but also of the Wisdom-Literature generally, that the term Wisdom is never used in the sense of pure knowledge; in its essence it connoted originally the faculty of distinguishing between what is good and what is bad, or, perhaps more accurately (in so far as earlier times are concerned), between what is advantageous and what is harmful. But in any case, regarding the nature of Wisdom, it is true to say that in the Jewish conception it had primarily a religious content from the beginning; that is to say, that it was in its origin essentially a divine attribute, the possession of which made man in some measure like God. In comparatively early times it must have come to this, that to be able to differentiate between good and evil, i.e. the exercise of the moral consciousness, enabled man to stand in a closer relationship to God than the mere external observance, however assiduously carried out, of a ceremonial law; this, at any rate, would have been the essence of the teaching of the prophets. It is in following such teaching that Ben-Sira inculcates the truth that the way to lead a wise life is to live according to the divine commandments; in contemplating the wisdom of God, as set forth in the commandments of God, and acting accordingly, man makes his human wisdom approximate to the divine, and worldly, practical wisdom, in its many and various forms, is thus of the same kind, only less in degree, as divine wisdom. It is thus easy to see, one may remark in passing, that the identification between the Law and Wisdom, referred to in the previous section, was inevitable. ‘Human wisdom comes from the communion between the mind of man and the mind of God. The unity of the divine and the human attributes (implicitly contained in the book) appears to involve the conception that the divine wisdom fills and controls all things, including man’s mind, and thus manifests itself in human thought;’1 this is true, but it needs to be emphasized that Ben-Sira’s strong insistence on human free-will makes it a matter of man’s choice whether his mind is filled with divine wisdom or something else.

Wisdom is, therefore, in the first place, of a religious nature. How essential an element this was in Ben-Sira’s conception of Wisdom will have been seen by what was said above as to the origin of Wisdom, namely, that it was an emanation from the Deity. This truth is further emphasized by the dictum, common to all the books of the Wisdom-Literature in one form or another, that:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom (1:14).

Though Ben-Sira takes this thought over from earlier sages, he nevertheless makes it thoroughly his own, and elaborates it in such sayings as:

The crown of Wisdom is the fear of the Lord (1:18);

To fear the Lord is the root of Wisdom (1:20).

But besides this specifically religious content, Wisdom has, according to Ben-Sira, another element in its nature. While the knowledge of God may be said to describe its most exalted characteristic, it has also a less exalted, but extremely useful, further characteristic in that it connotes knowledge of the world; not that this would imply a non-religious element in Wisdom, for the man with knowledge of the world has acquired this lower form of Wisdom, too, by his observance of the divine commandments; so that it need cause no surprise to find that it is this latter element in the nature of Wisdom to which Ben-Sira devotes most attention in his book. Nor is this an unnatural thing when it is remembered that the writer, having none but the vaguest ideas about a life hereafter, is mainly concerned with the affairs of this life. So he says of Wisdom that:

They that love her love life (4:12);

and again:

The wisdom of the poor man lifteth up his head,

And causeth him to sit among princes (11:1).

The large number of precepts which Ben-Sira offers as to general conduct of life are the utterances of a sage whose whole life has been spent in the acquisition of Wisdom; they form part, at least, of the result of his labours in her service; and the contribution which he has to offer his fellow-creatures is to teach them what in very large measure is worldly wisdom. These moral precepts differ widely, of course, from divine wisdom, but, as we have seen, both emanate from the same source, and both are ultimately to be traced back to the Giver of all good things.

It is owing to this practical nature of Wisdom that Ben-Sira insists on its being not only possessed, but also exhibited among men, so he says:

Hidden wisdom and concealed treasure,

What profit is there in either?

Better is the man that hideth his folly

Than a man that hideth his wisdom (20:30, 31).

To those who are desirous of acquiring Wisdom, Ben-Sira gives a piece of advice which well illustrates what has already been said above as to the religious element in every form of Wisdom:

If thou desire Wisdom, keep the commandments,

And the Lord will give her freely unto thee (1:26).

That Wisdom is the gift of God is again declared to be the case in 1:10:

Without measure doth He grant her to them that love Him.

Wisdom is thus the free gift of God; but this does not mean to say that man has not his part to play in order to enjoy this free gift; he has a discipline to go through which is irksome, and which will test the sincerity of the seeker:

But I will walk with him in disguise,

And at first I will try him with temptations.

Fear and dread will I bring upon him,

And I will torment him with chastisements (4:17).

Wisdom will also make great demands upon those that would be her servants; it is a hard course of instruction through which they must go:

… Bring thy feet into her fetters,

And thy neck into her chain;

Bow down thy shoulder, and bear her,

And chafe not under her bonds (6:24, 25).

But if Wisdom can only be acquired by earnest and sustained effort, if to possess her requires concentrated zeal and self-denial, the reward of those who persist is great in proportion. In a beautiful passage Ben-Sira describes this great reward:

For at length thou wilt find her rest,

And she shall be turned for thee into gladness.

And her fetters shall become a stay of strength for thee,

And her bonds for robes of glory.

An ornament of gold is her yoke,

And her fetters a cord of blue.

Thou shalt array thee with her (as with) robes of glory,

And crown thee with her (as with) a crown of beauty (6:28–31).

Clearly such a reward cannot be for the many; only the best types of men are able to obtain her; so Ben-Sira says:

For Wisdom is according to her name,

And to most men she is not manifest (6:22).

Indeed, Ben-Sira holds that humanity is divided into two categories, the wise and the foolish, or the good and the evil—to him the two terms are respectively synonymous; Wisdom’s attitude to each is thus expressed:

As a prison-house is Wisdom to a fool,

And the knowledge of the wise as coals of fire.

As chains on (their) feet is instruction to the foolish,

And as manacles on their right hand.

As a golden ornament is instruction to the wise,

And as a bracelet upon their right arm (21:18–21).

So lasting is the power of Wisdom among those who truly possess her, that the possession is regarded as hereditary:

If he trust me, he shall possess me,

And his posterity shall hold me fast (4:16, see also 1:15).

Yet even he who possesses Wisdom may lose his treasure by sinning, so it is said:

If he turn away (from me), I will forsake him,

And will deliver him over to the spoilers (4:19).

The only truly blessed are they who persistently follow after Wisdom (14:20–27); yet for this leisure is required; the ordinary occupations and callings of men are all good and necessary, but none are to be compared to that in which a man devotes himself wholly to the seeking out of the Wisdom of the ancients, which is none other than the fear of God and the Law of the Most High (see the whole of 38:24–39:11).

4. The Doctrine of Sin. The great problem of the existence of sin had, of course, exercised the minds of men for ages before the time of Ben-Sira. How was one to reconcile the facts of daily experience with the belief in an all-righteous, all-powerful God, who governed the world? ‘The ancient mythical religion had certainly connected physical evil with Adam’s sin; but when, after the Exile, the individual, as contrasted with the nation, became more prominently an object of consideration, difficulties doubtless began to appear to which the answer of the old theology was felt to be incomplete.’1 A suggested explanation of the difficulty is expressed in Ps. 37, where it is said that the destruction of the wicked comes suddenly, while he is in the midst of his prosperity (vv. 35, 36); and again, in the same psalm the Psalmist seeks to explain the difficulty by contrasting the ‘latter end’ of the righteous and the wicked respectively:

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright:

For the latter end of that man is peace.

As for transgressors, they shall be destroyed together;

The latter end of the wicked shall be cut off (vv. 37, 38).

In neither case was there any real solution of the problem. Later thinkers were impelled to offer another explanation; so, for example, the writer who explained that everything had been made for its own purpose:

The Lord hath made everything for its own end:

Yea, even the wicked for the day of evil (Prov. 16:4).

Ben-Sira was on safer ground when, in re-echoing earlier teaching, he said:

He that seeketh God will receive discipline (32:[35:]14),

i.e. any misfortune which befalls the righteous is looked upon as a discipline, and is, therefore, in reality for his benefit. None of these attempted solutions could, however, have been regarded as satisfactory, for they did not account for the divine acquiescence in the prosperity of the wicked, however much they might satisfy men as to the necessity of adversity for the righteous. In one passage Ben-Sira does strike out a somewhat original line of thought in seeking a solution of the mystery, though within the limits of the present life; a wicked man may, he says in effect, enjoy prosperity all his life, but so terrible may God cause his last hours to be that all his former enjoyment of life becomes wholly obliterated, and thus the apparent contradiction between the facts of life and the divine justice is harmonized; his words are:

For it is easy in Jahveh’s sight

At the end to requite a man according to his deeds.

An evil time causeth forgetfulness of delights,

And the last end of a man will tell of him.

Pronounce no man happy before his death;

For by his latter end a man shall be known (11:26–28).

This attempted solution, if it does nothing else, witnesses at any rate to the very earnest desire to try and explain a grave difficulty; and if, as a matter of fact, no advance is made in our book towards a satisfactory solution of what must have constituted a cruel mystery to the God-fearing of those days, it cannot cause surprise; with their lack of knowledge concerning the general laws upon which society is based and by which it exists, with their absolute ignorance concerning the laws of nature, with their very hazy conceptions concerning a fuller spiritual life hereafter, it was wholly impossible for the ancient Hebrew thinkers to frame any really satisfactory working theory whereby to harmonize the seeming contradiction between belief in the existence of an almighty, just God and the facts of human experience. Nevertheless, Ben-Sira had very definite ideas upon the existence of sin and its universal prevalence among men; he had also clearly thought and taught much about the nature and essence of sin, and the special importance of his book in connexion with this subject is that it is the only non-apocalyptic writing which unquestionably reflects light upon the Palestinian thought of its time concerning the introduction of sin and death into the world. ‘It is a unique link’, says Dr. Tennant, ‘between the Old Testament and the ancient Rabbinism. It is also important as a guide to the views of the time from the fact that its author, though perhaps conscious of the inadequacy of his inherited theology to solve all the problems and difficulties which presented themselves to an educated mind, allows himself but little liberty of thought.’1

With regard to the origin of sin, Ben-Sira’s treatment is highly instructive, for it reveals the difficulty in which he found himself involved as soon as he began to grapple with the subject. He mentions altogether three theories regarding the origin of sin; one of these he combats as erroneous. The first is that the existence of sin is due to God; this is the theory which he combats, though he does not seem to realize the difficulty in which he involves himself in doing so. The passage in which this is dealt with is 15:11–20, where Ben-Sira replies to those who trace back the origin of sin to God; he says:

Say not: ‘From God is my transgression,’

For that which He hateth made He not.

Say not: ‘(It is) He that made me to stumble,’

For there is no need of evil men.

Evil and abomination doth the Lord hate,

And He doth not let it come nigh to them that fear Him (15:11–13).

He says further in the course of his argument (and here his teaching on human free-will comes strongly to the fore):

God created man from the beginning,

And placed him in the hand of his Yeṣer.

If thou (so) desirest, thou canst keep the commandment,

And (it is) wisdom to do His good pleasure.

Poured out before thee (are) fire and water,

Stretch forth thine hand unto that which thou desirest.

Life and death (are) before man,

That which he desireth shall be given to him.…

He commanded no man to sin,

Nor gave strength to men of lies (15:14–20).

With regard to the word Yeṣer it may be noted in passing that in its primary meaning it denotes ‘form’ or ‘framing’, hence what is formed or framed in the mind, and it therefore comes to mean ‘imagination’ or ‘purpose’. It is used in a good sense in Isa. 26:3, 1 Chron. 29:18; on the other hand, in Gen. 6:5, 8:21 it is used of the evil imagination. In later times there arose the doctrine of a ‘good’ Yeṣer as opposed to the ‘evil’ Yeṣer, two opposing tendencies which, it was taught, were constituent elements in man’s spiritual nature. Prof. Schechter says: ‘The more conspicuous figure of the two Yeṣers is that of the evil Yeṣer. Indeed, it is not impossible that the expression good Yeṣer, as the antithesis of the evil Yeṣer, is a creation of later date.’2 It is, therefore, probable that Ben-Sira, when making use of the expression in the passage just quoted, had the evil Yeṣer, or ‘tendency’, in mind; at any rate, the context shows that even if the word was used in a neutral sense it was at least potentially the evil Yeṣer to which he referred; but as this tendency or inclination to evil was part of man’s nature it was created by God, so that Ben-Sira shows himself to have been in danger of falling, by implication, into the very error which he combats in the previously quoted passage (15:11–13); indeed, further on in his book he comes perilously near to a direct assertion that God created evil; see 33:(G 36:)13–15, 37:3. So that, at least by implication, Ben-Sira might well be convicted of imputing the origin of evil to God, though he refrains from doing so explicitly.1

A second theory which Ben-Sira brings forward is expressed in 25:24:

From a woman did sin originate [lit. is the beginning of sin],

And because of her we all must die.

Dr. Tennant, in writing on this verse, says: ‘It has to be borne in mind that when, in the second clause of the verse, the writer passes to the thought of death, to the relation of Eve’s sin to our universal mortality, a causal connexion is distinctly asserted. The use of teḥillah [‘beginning’] in the former clause does not perhaps in itself preclude the thought of such connexion, in the case of sin, having presented itself to Ben-Sira’s mind, but it certainly does not suggest any such connexion.… If Ben-Sira intended to imply that Eve’s transgression was the cause or origin of human sinfulness he was venturing further than was his wont beyond the letter of the Scriptural narrative which he had in mind, and was already in possession of a much deeper view of the first transgression than is to be met with in Jewish literature until we come to St. Paul’s Epistles, the Slavonic book of Enoch, and 4 (2) Esdras.’2 In any case, this second theory of Ben-Sira’s only traces the history of sin from the time that it existed in humanity without following it further back.3

Finally, a third theory, though not expressed in definite form, can with much probability be shown to have been in the mind of Ben-Sira. In 21:27, 28 it is said:

When the fool curseth his adversary [lit. Satan],

He curseth his own soul;

The whisperer defileth his own soul,

And is hated wheresoever he sojourneth.4

This is a difficult passage, but it seems clear that by the words ‘The whisperer defileth his own soul’ Ben-Sira meant to express the truth that the evil in man is of his own making; it is also evident that the words are intended to be an illustration of the truth enunciated in the preceding couplet. Whatever is meant by ‘adversary’—whether ‘Satan’ in the sense of the devil, or an adversary in its ordinary meaning—the words which follow (‘He curseth his own soul’) show that what Ben-Sira intends to teach is that the ‘adversary’ is synonymous with the ungodly man’s own self; or, as Hart explains it, ‘not Satan, but the man himself is responsible for his sin.’5 The verse, as Cheyne has pointed out, can be illustrated by Ps. 36:1 (R. V. marg.): ‘Transgression saith to the wicked within his heart …’6 To explain the words by saying that when a man curses somebody else who is his enemy he curses himself, i.e. that the curse recoils upon his own head, would not only be contrary to the ideas of the times, but would also be out of harmony with the words which follow. The Syriac translator evidently saw the difficulty of making ‘the adversary’ refer to somebody other than ‘the fool’, but not perceiving the point of the words he put in a negative, thus giving a different turn to the whole, and rendered: ‘When the fool curseth him who sinned not against him, he curseth his own soul.’ The gist of the passage may then be taken to be that man is his own ‘Satan’; in other words, that the origin of sin is to be sought in man himself. This may be illustrated by another passage:

What is brighter than the sun? Yet this faileth;

And (how much more) man who (hath) the inclination of flesh and blood!7 (17:31).

Dr. Tennant paraphrases the Greek thus: ‘Even the sun darkens itself—the brightest thing in the world; how much more, then, frail man!’ He says, further, in connexion with this verse, that if Ben-Sira offers any excuse for man’s depravity ‘it is that of his natural and essential frailty, referred to in such passages as 17:30–32, but never traced to an external cause’.1 Difficult as the verse is, it may be concluded that its meaning illustrated Ben-Sira’s teaching in the previously considered passage that the origin of sin is to be sought in man.2 That this belief was held in certain Jewish circles may be gathered from the following words which occur in 1 Enoch 98:4: ‘I have sworn unto you, ye sinners, as a mountain has not become a slave, And a hill does not become the handmaid of a woman, Even so sin hath not been sent upon the earth, But man of himself hath created it, And under a great curse shall they fall who commit it.’3

The three passages discussed suggest, therefore, a belief that sin originates within man, and is of his own making, irrespective of any external agency; but there are other passages which point distinctly to a belief that sin is external to man; see, for example, 21:2, 27:10.

So that Ben-Sira’s teaching on the origin of sin may be summed up in the following way: He implies, though he does not definitely assert it, that the creation of sin is due to God; yet in one passage of considerable importance he strongly combats this theory. He teaches, further, that so far as the human race is concerned the origin of sin is to be sought in the fall of Eve; but he does not attempt to trace its history further back; this, however, was from his point of view unnecessary if, in accordance with his third theory, sin originates in each individual; nevertheless, he involves himself in a contradiction here in saying that because of Eve’s sin all men must die. In addition to this, however, there is the further inconsistency regarding his third theory, for while teaching that sin originates within man, he speaks of sin as something external to man. These contradictory thoughts bring into clear relief Ben-Sira’s inability to formulate a consistent and logical doctrine as to the origin of sin; and in this he but shows himself to be a forerunner of the Rabbis, from whose writings it can be seen that later thinkers were involved in precisely the same inconsistencies as soon as they attempted to construct a working theory on the subject.

But the theoretical difficulties in which Ben-Sira was involved did not in any way detract from his deep realization of the existence and universal prevalence of sin; he witnesses to this in many passages, as may be seen by a reference to the following passages among many others: 4:26, 7:8, 8:5, 23:4b–6.

5. The Doctrine of the Future Life. In the main Ben-Sira’s belief concerning the Hereafter was that of the normal teaching of the Psalms; such passages, for example, as Ps. 6:5 (‘For in death there is no remembrance of Thee: In Sheol who shall give Thee thanks?’), and 119:17, 18, 106:2, cp. Isa. 38:18, 19, are clearly the pattern on which he bases his teaching in 17:27, 28:

For what pleasure hath God in all that perish in Hades,

In place of those who live and give Him praise?

Thanksgiving perisheth from the dead as from one that is not,

(But) he that liveth and is in health praiseth the Lord.

Although death, as a rule, marks the end of all things and is usually connected with corruption (10:11, 17:32, 28:6), yet Ben-Sira does not speak of it as necessarily a cause of terror; indeed, under certain circumstances, it is preferable to life; he says, e.g., in 41:2:

Hail! Death, how welcome is thy decree

To the luckless man, and that lacketh strength,

That stumbleth and trippeth at everything,

That is broken, and hath lost hope.

See also 32:11, 30:17, 40:28. On the other hand, death is terrible to him who is in prosperity and in the enjoyment of health (40:1). Sometimes death is spoken of as a punishment (7:17, 40:9, 10); but there is nowhere any mention of punishment after death. The only sense in which, according to Ben-Sira, a man can be said to ‘live’ after death was by means of his wisdom which he had acquired in his lifetime:

His understanding many do praise,

And never shall his name be blotted out:

His memory shall not cease,

And his name shall live from generation to generation (39:9).

Or, again, in the following fine passage (41:11–13):

Vanity is man (concerning) his body,

But the name of the pious shall not be cut off.

Be in fear far thy name, for that abideth longer for thee

Than thousands of precious treasures.

Life’s goods last for limited days,

But the reward of a name for days without number.

In some few instances there seem to be the beginnings of what might naturally have developed into a somewhat fuller conception of life hereafter, the adumbration of a belief in something more than a mere shadowy existence beyond the grave. The instances are those in which the dead are said to ‘rest’, an idea very different from that of death being corruption and the end of all things, which is the more usual one in our book. The conception of the dead ‘resting’ must involve some sort of a belief beyond that of the bare existence of the spirit in the future state; thus, in 22:11 Ben-Sira says:

Weep gently for the dead, for he hath found rest (cp. also 29:17, 38:23).

It is of particular interest to note, in view of the development of ideas concerning the future life which took place during the second century b.c., that in at least two instances the Greek shows an advance upon the corresponding Hebrew conception; in 7:17 the Hebrew has:

Humble (thy) pride greatly,

For the expectation of man is worms.

For this the Greek has:

Humble thy soul greatly,

For the punishment of the ungodly man is fire and the worm.1

The other passage is 48:11, but for the details of this recourse must be had to the notes in the commentary.