Sirach — Chapter 19
Discretion in Speech and Genuine Wisdom
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Hebrew–Greek comparison and notes · III. Wisdom
19:1 A drunken worker will not become rich; the one who despises small things will fall little by little.
19:2 Wine and women will lead understanding men astray, and the one who clings to prostitutes will become more reckless.
19:3 Rot and worms will inherit him, and a reckless soul will be taken away.
19:4 The one who trusts quickly is lighthearted, and the one who sins will wrong his own soul.
19:5 The one who rejoices in heart will be condemned,
19:6 but the one who hates chatter diminishes evil.
19:7 Never repeat a word, and nothing will be diminished for you.
19:8 Do not tell it to friend or enemy, and unless silence is a sin for you, do not reveal it.
19:9 For someone has heard you and kept watch on you, and in time he will hate you.
19:10 Have you heard a word? Let it die with you. Take courage; it will certainly not burst you.
19:11 A fool will suffer labor pains over a word, like a woman giving birth over her baby.
19:12 An arrow fixed in the flesh of a thigh—so is a word in a fool’s belly.
19:13 Question a friend; perhaps he did not do it, and if he did something, so that he may not repeat it.
19:14 Question your neighbor; perhaps he did not say it, and if he has said it, so that he may not say it again.
19:15 Question a friend, for slander often occurs; do not trust every report.
19:16 There is someone who slips without intending it in his soul; who has not sinned with his tongue?
19:17 Question your neighbor before threatening him, and give place to the law of the Most High.
19:20 All wisdom is fear of the Lord, and in all wisdom there is doing the law.
19:22 Knowledge of wickedness is not wisdom, and where sinners take counsel there is no prudence.
19:23 There is shrewdness that is an abomination, and there is a foolish person deficient in wisdom.
19:24 Better someone lacking understanding but full of fear than someone abounding in prudence who transgresses the law.
19:25 There is precise shrewdness that is unjust, and there is someone who twists matters in order to bring a judgment to light.
19:26 There is someone who acts wickedly while bowed down in gloom, with his inward parts full of deceit.
19:27 Hiding his face and pretending to be deaf, where he has not been recognized he will get ahead of you.
19:28 If lack of strength prevents him from sinning, he will do evil when he finds an opportunity.
19:29 A man will be recognized from his appearance, and an understanding person from the look of his face.
19:30 A man’s clothing, the grin of his teeth, and a person’s steps will declare what he is like.
Source and editorial notes
Working translation preserved from the recovered manuscript of 8 September 2026. Declared source: Septuaginta, Rahlfs–Hanhart, 2006, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, publisher’s Greek main text. Independent linguistic and critical-apparatus review remains outstanding. Source-access and reception claims in the inherited notes have not been freshly revalidated. Chapter and section headings are editorial.
The translator’s prologue is separate from the 51 chapters. Its eight source units map to publisher labels 1, 1a–1g; main-text 1:1 maps to 1h. Source 5:15 includes material often numbered 6:1, so chapter 6 begins at 6:2. Source label gaps are preserved; no text is invented.
19:3 Here rot and worms are explicitly the inheriting subject, unlike 10:11.
19:4 Lighthearted represents the unfavorable sense of κοῦφος καρδίᾳ, a thoughtless or unstable heart.
19:5 This is the actual short wording, without an expressed object such as wickedness. Its relation to the next clause remains difficult; no unprinted object is supplied.
19:7 The injunction occurs in a context of circulating reports, rather than necessarily every form of verbal repetition.
19:8 Silence is supplied to express the conditional force of unless there is sin for you; the source itself does not name a specific legal duty.
19:12 The painful bodily comparison is retained.
19:13 Question represents corrective examination in ἔλεγξον, leaving room for the friend’s innocence.
19:17 The next printed label is 20; labels 18–19 are absent.
19:20 The next printed label is 22; label 21 is absent.
19:24 Fear is understood positively from fear of the Lord in context; that full title is not repeated in the Greek here.
19:25 Matters supplies the object of twists. Χάριν τοῦ is taken as the purpose construction in order to, not as a separate object meaning favor. The exact judicial maneuver remains unspecified.
19:30 All three external signs are retained; the verse’s proverbial observation is not recast as a diagnostic rule.